Characters
- Aeolus Hippotades — lord of the winds; giver, then refuser
- Aeolus’s sons and daughters — island household
- Odysseus — guest; keeper of the bag; sleeps at the critical moment
- Odysseus’s crew — open the sack; ruin the homeward breeze
Places
- Aeolia — floating island of Aeolus
- Near Ithaca — land almost sighted before the storm
- Open sea — return track to Aeolia
Themes
Narrative
Odysseus reached Aeolia, the floating island of Aeolus Hippotades, steward of the winds by Zeus’s gift. Aeolus and his six sons married to six daughters feasted the strangers a full month. At departure Aeolus bagged the boisterous winds in an ox-hide sack, bound it with a silver cord, and left only the west wind free to waft them home, charging Odysseus alone to keep the bag.
For nine days and nights the ships ran toward Ithaca; the watchers already saw the herdsmen’s fires when Odysseus, exhausted, fell asleep. His crew, suspecting the sack held gold and silver withheld from them, opened it. The winds burst out in a storm and drove the fleet straight back to Aeolia. Aeolus, finding them returned, refused a second gift—clearly the gods hated this man—and cast them out. The bag episode thus ruins an almost-completed nostos through greed and failed vigilance, before the remnant ever reaches the Laestrygonians.