Aeolia

Aeolia is a strange, artificial place: a floating island with a bronze wall that cannot be scaled and a cliff rising from the sea. Aeolus lives there with his wife and six sons and six daughters, who are married to one another. The island is a closed household, self-sufficient and remote from ordinary human society.

Odysseus arrives after the adventure with the Cyclopes and is received generously. Aeolus listens to his story and gives him the bag of winds as a parting gift.

The gift should have brought Odysseus home. For nine days he sails within sight of Ithaca, holding the bag, while his crew becomes suspicious that it contains treasure. While he sleeps, they open it, and the winds burst out and drive the ship back to Aeolia.

When Odysseus returns, Aeolus refuses to help him again, saying that a man hated by the gods cannot be escorted home. The island thus marks the point at which the return stops being a matter of divine favour and becomes a test of endurance. The almost-return is one of the Odyssey’s cruellest episodes.