Aeolus. I. In Greek mythological history, a son of Hellen, who, in the division by the latter of the government of the Hellenes or Greeks between him and his brothers Dorus and Xuthus, received the throne of Thessaly and named his subjects the Aeolians. He was the progenitor of a great race of heroes, the Aeolids, from whom in turn sprang many of the most famous personages of the Greek legends. Other genealogies were also given by the Greeks to Aeolus, but the above, that of the Hesiodic catalogue, is that which Grote believes to have been generally received.

II. An inferior god or demigod, ruler of the winds. There seems no good reason to connect this Aeolus with the preceding, but a few Greek authors endeavored to prove even the identity of the two, while others made the demigod the son of Jupiter and Acasta, daughter of Hippotas. Aeolus was supposed to have his home in the island now called Stromboli, of the Lipari group, anciently known as the Aeolian islands. Aecording to tradition, he kept the several winds confined in bags, releasing them at the command of Neptune.

Aeon, a Greek term signifying age. In Gnostic speculations, asons are embodiments of divine attributes. (See Gnostics.)

Aepins. I. Johann (the Greek translation of his real name, Hoch or Hock, high), a German theologian, born at Ziegesar, Brandenburg, in 1499, died in Hamburg, May 13, 1553. He studied at Wittenberg, was arrested on account of his zeal for the cause of Luther, and exerted himself after his release in England and Germany on behalf of the reformation. He was afterward for some time teacher at Stralsund, and organized the new educational and ecclesiastical system there, and in Hamburg (1522), in which latter city he was pastor, and afterward superintendent of St. Peter's church from 1529 till his death. He was one of the signers of the Smalcald articles in 1537, shared in the theological controversies regarding the Interim, the Adiaphora, and the doctrines of Osiander, and was supported by Fla-cius and others, and to a moderate extent also by Melanchthon.

II. Franz Ulridi Theodor, a German physicist, a descendant of the preceding, born at Rostock in December, 1724, died in Dorpat in 1802. He became professor of physics and member of the academy of sciences at St. Petersburg in 1757. Catharine II. appointed him teacher of her son Paul, director of the nobility corps of cadets, and inspector general of the normal schools which she projected. He is honored as the inventor of the electrophus and of electric condensation, an improver of the microscope, and the discoverer of the electrical polarity of tourmaline, He contributed extensively to the publications of the Berlin and St. Petersburg academies. His principal work is Tentamen Theoriae Elec-tricitatis et Magnetismi (St. Petersburg, 1759; French translation, abridged by Hauy. 1787). One of his other works, written in German, was translated in 1762 into French by M. Raoult, under the title of Reflexions sur la distribution de la chaleur sur la surface de la terre. He wrote in French Description des nouveaux microscopes inventes par M. Aepinus (St. Petersburg, 1786).