Aeolia (mythical island)

A photograph of the Aeolian Islands, showing Lipari in the middle, Salina to the left, and Panarea to the right. Overhead is a blue but cloudy sky. — A view of some modern Aeolian Islands, standing on Vulcano, with Lipari in the middle, Salina at the left, Panarea at the right

Aeolia (Ancient Greek: 'Αἰολία), the island kingdom of Aeolus, the ruler of the winds, visited by Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. In the Odyssey, Aeolus' Aeolia was purely mythical, a floating island surrounded by "a wall of unbreakable bronze" where the "cliffs run up shear".^[1]

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.^[2] The Greek geographer Strabo, reports that Strongyle (modern Stromboli), one of the Lipari Islands, was said to be Aeolus' island.^[3] Others associated the island of Lipara (modern Lipari) with Aeolia.^[4]

^ Hard, p. 494; Tripp, s.v. Aeolus 2; Grimal, s.v. Aeolia 1; Smith, s.v. Aeolus; Homer, Odyssey 10.1–4.
^ Hard, p. 494; Tripp, s.v. Aeolus 2; Grimal, s.v. Aeolia 1; Smith, s.v. Aeolus.
^ Strabo, 6.2.11.
^ See Virgil, Aeneid 8.416; Pausanias, 10.11.3.

[1] Hard, p. 494; Tripp, s.v. Aeolus 2; Grimal, s.v. Aeolia 1; Smith, s.v. Aeolus; Homer, Odyssey 10.1–4.

[2] Hard, p. 494; Tripp, s.v. Aeolus 2; Grimal, s.v. Aeolia 1; Smith, s.v. Aeolus.

[3] Strabo, 6.2.11.

[4] See Virgil, Aeneid 8.416; Pausanias, 10.11.3.

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