Aeolia (), the island kingdom of Aeolus, the ruler of the winds, visited by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. In the Odyssey, Aeolus' Aeolia was a floating island surrounded by "a wall of unbreakable bronze" where the "cliffs run up shear."Hard, p. 494; Tripp, s.v. Aeolus 2; Grimal, s.v. Aeolia 1; Smith, s.v. Aeolus; Homer, Odyssey 10.1–4.
Homer does not say anything about where the island was located, but later writers came to associate Aeolia with one or another of the Lipari Islands (also called the Aeolian Islands), north of eastern Sicily.Hard, p. 494; Tripp, s.v. Aeolus 2; Grimal, s.v. Aeolia 1; Smith, s.v. Aeolus. The Greek geographer Strabo reports that Strongyle (modern Stromboli), one of the Lipari Islands, was said to be Aeolus' island.Strabo, 6.2.11. Others associated the island of Lipara (modern Lipari) with Aeolia.See Virgil, Aeneid 8.416; Pausanias, 10.11.3.
The cult of Aeolus on Lipari is extraordinarily well-documented by the discovery of the so-called bothros of Aeolus on the Acropolis. Discovered in 1964 in front of the Cathedral, this votive deposit yielded an olpe bearing a dedicatory inscription to Aeolus, which made it possible to identify the deity with certainty. Archaeology has confirmed the site of the myth.
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References Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. . Internet Archive. Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, . Google Books. Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Strabo, Geography, translated by Horace Leonard Jones; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. (1924). LacusCurtis, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, Books 6–14. Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). . Virgil, Aeneid, Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.