In Homer, Aeolus is unequivocally the son of Hippotes. This parentage is the anchor of his identity and the cleanest way to separate him from the other mythological men named Aeolus. Hippotades can mean son of Hippotes, but it also carries the image of the Reiner of Horses, a title that suits the ancient idea that winds were horse-shaped powers bridled and restrained by their master. Later writers attempted to place this Aeolus within the genealogy of Aeolus son of Hellen, but the Odyssey gives him his own father and his own story. The Homeric king belongs to the sea, not to the Thessalian family tree.

His kingdom was Aeolia, a floating island drifting upon the sea. A wall of unbroken bronze surrounded it, and beyond the wall rose sheer rock. Inside lived Aeolus, his wife, six sons and six daughters. The sons had married their sisters, creating a family entirely enclosed by the island's wall. The household lived in a continual banquet. Through the hall moved the sounds of music, the smells of roasted meat and the warmth of a family that needed no outside world. The image makes Aeolia a complete cosmos in miniature, ruled by a mortal whom the gods counted among their friends.

Zeus had appointed him tamiês anemôn, steward or keeper of the winds. His task was both preservation and release. He could still the winds, rouse them, or send one in a chosen direction. The image was practical as well as poetic: Greek sailors depended upon the winds, but a storm could destroy a fleet in hours. The Greeks imagined the winds as horse-like powers that had to be confined and harnessed. Aeolus held the reins.

Odysseus, king of Ithaca, arrived after the Trojan War with his battered fleet. Aeolus received him hospitably. For a month the wind-king kept Odysseus in the palace and questioned him about Troy, the Greek heroes, the fall of the city and the sufferings that had brought him across the sea. When the time came to leave, Aeolus gave him a gift more valuable than gold. He filled an ox-hide bag with every wind that might oppose the voyage, tied it with a silver cord and fastened it in the ship's hold. Only Zephyrus, the west wind, remained free to carry the fleet home.

For nine days and nights the ships sailed steadily towards Ithaca. On the tenth day the island appeared. Odysseus saw the familiar coast and knew that he had come within sight of his own palace. Exhausted after holding the steering oar himself for nine days, he fell asleep. The crew, convinced that the bag contained treasure Aeolus had given secretly to their captain, opened the silver cord. Every adverse wind rushed out at once. The storm seized the ships and carried them back across the sea to Aeolia.

Odysseus returned to the palace and begged for help. Aeolus refused. The king had received him as a favoured man, but the released winds had shown divine hostility. He called Odysseus hateful, accused him of being hated by the blessed gods and drove him from the island. The gift had promised an end to wandering, but human greed reopened the journey.

Aeolus appears again in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, where Hera sends Iris to ask him to calm every wind except Zephyrus while the Argo sails towards Phaeacia. The episode broadens his function from host of Odysseus to a cosmic agent whose decisions make heroic travel possible. He holds the winds in check so that Jason and the Argonauts may continue their journey. In these scenes the Greek poets imagine the ocean not as an empty space but as a domain regulated by appointed powers.

Later tradition moved him closer to divinity. In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeolus holds the winds in a cave on the island, chained like wild beasts behind barriers. Juno comes to him and promises the beautiful nymph Deiopea as his wife if he releases the winds against the fleet of Aeneas. Aeolus obeys, but Neptune, whose authority over the sea the storm has challenged, rises from the depths and rebukes him. The episode turns the Homeric steward into a ruler whose power can be bought and whose actions require supervision by a greater god.

Diodorus Siculus gives the most rational account of his reputation. In this telling Aeolus came to Lipara, the chief of the Aeolian Islands, married the daughter of King Liparus and governed with justice. He taught sailors to use sails and learned to predict the local winds by watching signs in the fire. Because of this practical mastery, later poets transformed him into the ruler of the winds themselves. The explanation strips the myth of its supernatural vessel and replaces it with observation, technology and good seamanship.

The Aeolian Islands gave the story a geographical home. Their volcanic smoke, especially the glowing eruptions of Stromboli, appeared to ancient sailors as visible breath from the earth. Strabo reports that Strongyle was called the home of Aeolus. The islands could be imagined as the prison or stable of the winds, with smoke rising from the cave where the storms were chained. The identification joins Aeolus to the Mediterranean world of real weather.

Greek and Roman art followed the epic scenes. Vase painters showed Odysseus approaching the island or carrying the bag. Roman frescoes and later European paintings returned to Aeolus opening his cave for Juno, the winds rushing out as winged figures. Sculptures and reliefs personified the winds around him as muscular men with puffed cheeks, turning his island into a court of the Anemoi.

The name Aeolus later became so famous that other figures with the same name were drawn into his orbit. Euripides, Ovid and Hyginus transferred children such as Canace, Macareus and Alcyone from the genealogy of Aeolus son of Hellen onto the wind-keeper or his household. Ovid even calls Alcyone Hippotades, tying her explicitly to Hippotes. These later combinations created the ancient confusion from which modern retellings inherited the image of a wind-ruling father of Canace and Alcyone. The older genealogical figure remains separate.

This record therefore preserves the Homeric Aeolus as son of Hippotes. He is not the ancestor of the Aeolian Greeks, not the husband of Enarete and not the father of Sisyphus and Athamas. He is the mortal keeper who gave Odysseus the bag of winds, the calm authority of the Argonauts' return and the storm-lord of Virgil's cave. His story begins and ends with the winds.