Lucian invents this nonsense name for a character in the battle of the floating islands in True Histories (V.H. 1.40-42, at 42). One of the 90-metre-tall giants with flames as hair, he commands the victorious "navy" of islands, using their forests as sails in the wind. It may be part of the humour that there is no way of telling which of the many senses of αἰόλος (alphaiota 253) is appropriate to the giant. Perhaps it applies to his horse-half, as 'swift' or 'swift-circling' (cf. alphaiota 251). More likely, it is already used in the sense of αἰολόμορφος , so common in the Orphic Hymns (4.7, 12.3, 15.10, 32.11, 36.12, 39.5, 50.5, 60.5, 69.8) for the power of heroes and gods to undergo metamorphosis; cf. our were-wolf.