The phrase is, recognizably, a nautical metaphor (when their sails are filled with wind, vessels are able to glide over the sea quickly and effortlessly) and traces its roots back to the Latin world. The expression a gonfie vele, very popular now in colloquial Italian, seems in fact to echo the similar Latin expression pleno velo. A metaphor, this one, employed by the Latin poet Virgil in the Aeneid, the celebrated epic poem that tells the story of a Trojan hero named Aeneas, the son of prince Anchises and the Greek goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite.