Aeolus

Aeolus is a figure from ancient Greek mythology known as the ruler of the winds. In various traditions he is described as a divine being or mortal king who governs the winds from the island of Aeolia, and he is commonly portrayed as the keeper or custodian of the winds, charged by the gods with their release and containment.

One of the best-known myths involves Odysseus. In Homer's Odyssey, Aeolus welcomes Odysseus and his crew, and gives them a leather pouch containing all the winds except the favorable west wind. He warns them not to open it. The sailors, however, become anxious and open the bag during a moment of distress, releasing the winds and driving the ship back to the island, and preventing their voyage home. Aeolus, believing the gods oppose Odysseus, refuses further aid. The episode serves as a narrative illustration of the unpredictability of winds and fate.

Beyond Odyssey, Aeolus appears in other literary works as a personification or ruler of winds. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeolus is invoked to unleash storms that scatter Aeneas’s fleet, a storm later quelled by divine intervention. The name Aeolus has also become connected to the Aeolian winds and the associated geographic naming; the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily are traditionally associated with him and were named after the mythic figure.

In modern times, the name Aeolus has been used for the European Space Agency's Aeolus mission, launched in 2018, an atmospheric dynamics mission that uses a Doppler wind lidar to measure wind speed and direction from space, with the aim of improving weather forecasting and climate models.