The Bag of the Three Winds
A weary King Odysseus dozes off on his voyage home to Ithaca, but his crew are wide awake, wondering what is in his bag.
after 1184 BC
© Giovanni, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
A view across the Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily, in Italy’s Tyrrhenian Sea. The photo is taken from Vulcano, with Lipari in the middle, Salina at the left, and Panarea off to the right.
Introduction
Odysseus, King of the island of Ithaca in the Ionian Sea, is on his way home after many years away fighting in the Siege of Troy. He has had a little trouble with one-eyed Polyphemus, the Cyclops, and a few weeks rest with the odd but hospitable family of Aeolus is just what he needs.
AFTER his encounter with the Cyclops, Odysseus landed on the Aeolian Islands near Sicily. There, he was warmly welcomed by Aeolus himself, who enquired keenly about Odysseus’s experiences in the Siege of Troy. But after enjoying a month’s rest, it was time for Odysseus to think about going home to Ithaca.
Aeolus was most helpful. He took Odysseus aside and gave him a sack, sewn together from pieces of ox-hide, in which he had trapped the north, south and east winds (as he was entitled to do, for Zeus had made him Keeper of the winds).* That left a gentle west wind free to carry Odysseus’s ship back to Greece.
Ten days’ sailing later, Ithaca’s home fires were in sight when Odysseus, who had not taken his hand from the tiller in all that time, fell asleep. As soon as they saw him nod, his crew huddled together and began a whispered conference about the captain’s mysterious ox-hide sack, bound at the neck with silver thread.
Aeolus kept the Four Winds, it was said, in a cave on what is now the island of Stromboli, one of the eight Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea west of Italy, and let them out from time to time to blow freely over the earth.
