Page 204 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

AEOLIAN LEGENDS

Volcanoes have always been identified with the mouths of hell, and legend has it that
Jupiter’s son, Vulcan, had his workshop in the Aeolians. Vulcano is named after this
god of fire and metalworking, while another island takes its name from Liparus,

whose daughter Ciane married Aeolus, ruler of the winds and master of navigation;
Aeolus, in turn, lent his name to the whole archipelago. These winds were kept in
one of the Aeolians’ many caves, and were presented to Odysseus in a bag to take on
his travels. His curious crew opened the bag and, as a result, blew his ship straight
back to port.

Brief history

The first historic settlers exploited the volcanic resources, above all the abundance of
obsidian, a hard glass-like rock that can be worked to produce a fine cutting edge, and
was traded far and wide, accruing enormous wealth to the archipelago. The islands
were drawn more closely into the Greek ambit by the arrival, around 580 BC, of

refugees from the wars between Segesta and Selinus (Selinunte). Those Greeks based
at the fortified citadel of Lipari later allied themselves with Carthage, which made
Lipari its base during the First Punic War. For its pains, Greek Lipari was destroyed
by the Romans in 251 BC and the islands became part of the Roman province of
Sicily, paying hefty taxes on exports of obsidian. The islands subsequently changed
hands several times before being abandoned to the frequent attacks of wide-ranging

North African pirates, culminating in a terrible slaughter that took place in 1544 at the
hands of Khair ed-Din, or Barbarossa, who consigned all the survivors of the
massacre to slavery – a figure estimated to have been as high as 10,000.

Political prisoners, emigration and Il Postino

Italian unification saw the islands used as a prison for political exiles, a role that
continued right up to World War II, with the Fascists exiling their political opponents
to Lipari. The last political detainee to be held here was, ironically, Mussolini’s own
daughter, Edda Ciano, in 1946. By the 1950s emigration, especially to Australia, had

reduced the Aeolian population to a mere handful of families, when the release of
Rossellini’s Stromboli: Terra di Dio (1949) and the story of his affair on the island
with star Ingrid Bergman put the archipelago under the spotlight. The curious began to
visit the islands, many of them buying properties for a song, while other film-makers
followed, many of them pioneers in underwater photography. Today’s economy is
based on tourism, with hotels sprouting on previously barren ground, and running

water and electricity installed (almost) everywhere. Nonetheless, enough primitive
splendour has remained for the islands to continue to attract film crews, and Michael
Radford’s Il Postino (1994), filmed on Salina, and Nanni Moretti’s Caro Diario