“Nine days I drifted on the teeming sea
before dangerous high winds. Upon the tenth
we came to the coastline of the Lotos Eaters,
who live upon that flower. We landed there
to take on water. All ships’ companies
mustered alongside for the mid-day meal.
Then I sent out two picked men and a runner
to learn what race of men that land sustained.
They fell in, soon enough, with Lotos Eaters,
who showed no will to do us harm, only
offering the sweet Lotos to our friends –
but those who ate this honeyed plant, the Lotos,
never cared to report, nor to return:
they longed to stay forever, browsing on
that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland.
I drove them, all three wailing, to the ships
tied them down under their rowing benches,
and called the rest: “All hands aboard;
come, clear the beach and no one taste
the Lotos, or you lose your hope of home.”
Filing in to their places by the rowlocks
my oarsmen dipped their long oars in the surf,
and we moved out again on our sea faring.”
This captures the tale in full, although Butcher and Lang are better on the reluctance of the men to return (“weeping, and sore against their will”) and on Odysseus’ reasons for urging the rest of his crew to make speed – “lest haply any should eat of the lotus and be forgetful of returning.”
Tennyson takes the tale and runs with it, having all the mariners eat the Lotos leaves and get proactive with their addiction, resolving to stay in that happy land and, in chorus, going through all the reasons for doing so. Having made up their minds upon hearing the sweet and soporific music, they question why man is the only creature bound by labor; positively submit to hedonism and the life of continuous dreaming; reason that their families have probably forgotten them anyway, and that their homes have fallen apart, and so determine to “let what is broken so remain;” and compare this new-found life of abandon, even, to the life of the Gods:
“Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.”
Herodotus places the Lotos Eaters along the coast of Libya, between the Gindanes and the Machlyans (who also make use of the lotos, “but less than those above mentioned”). (The Gindanes have their own marked custom: the women “wear each of them a number of anklets made of the skins of animals, for the following reason, as it is said:—for every man who has commerce with her she binds on an anklet, and the woman who has most is esteemed the best, since she has been loved by the greatest number of men.” But that’s another story.) In The Histories (Book IV (Melpomene)), the Lotos Eaters not only existed once upon a time, but still did, and still lived on lotus leaves alone, which is perhaps one reason why Thucydides famously complained, “He’s making this up.” The older historian makes no mention of the “forgetfulness” (the "high," or "buzz," to use the historian's terms of art) but does note that alcohol was a dietary variant:
“In a peninsula which stands out into the sea from the land of these Gindanes dwell the Lotophagoi, who live by eating the fruit of the lotos only. Now the fruit of the lotos is in size like that of the mastich-tree, and in flavor it resembles that of the date-palm. Of this fruit the Lotophagoi even make for themselves wine.”
Maybe the episode is so short because it has such a simple lesson: browse on that “native bloom” and lose all “hope of home.” In that regard, the scouts and the herald were lucky, in having, in Odysseus, a ready-made higher power, although even then it wasn’t easy, the cure being sore against their will. But Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters, with all the excuses they can muster, sound more like the Lotos Eaters I know.
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