in greek mythology, iphigenia was offered as a human sacrifice to appease the wrath of the goddess artemis, who had becalmed the achaean fleet at aulis at the beginning of the trojan war. in homer's "odyssey", aeolus, keeper of the winds, bestowed odysseus and his crew with a gift of the four winds in a bag. however, the sailors opened the bag while odysseus slept, looking for booty (money), and as a result were blown off course by the resulting gale. in ancient rome, the "lapis manalis" was a sacred stone kept outside the walls of rome in a temple of mars. when rome suffered from drought, the stone was dragged into the city.