The Lotophagi are a group of people in The Odyssey who live on an island off the coast of North Africa and eat a soporific plant that causes them to forget their homelands and live apathetic lives. Their diet makes them sleepy and uninterested in the world around them. Odysseus and his crew encounter them, and some of his crew express a desire to stay on the island. The idea of the lotus eaters has appeared in numerous works of art and popular culture.
The Lotophagi, or Lotophagi, are a group of people described in the Greek epic The Odyssey. Odysseus and his crew meet them in book nine, and while their meeting is brief, it is memorable. These people have so captivated generations of readers that they have appeared in numerous works of art, from poems to paintings, and are sometimes referenced in popular culture.
According to legend, lotus eaters live on an island off the coast of North Africa. While several intrepid historians have tried to locate the island’s site, they have yet to find a location that matches the description in the Odyssey. Lotophagi feed on a soporific plant which causes them to forget their homelands and live apathetic and indifferent lives. Their diet makes them sleepy and languid, as well as uninterested in the world around them.
There is some debate as to what lotus eaters actually ate. In some translations, they are described as the Lotos Eaters, who muddy the waters a bit, as the Greeks used the term “lotos” to talk about various edible plants. While they may have eaten the roots, fruits, or flowers of water lotuses, they may also have eaten dates, persimmons, jujubes, or various other plants, none of which are known to be particularly narcotic.
When Odysseus encounters the Lotus Eaters, some of his crew famously grab the food and express a desire to stay on the island. Ulysses is forced to drag the crew back to the ship, “weeping bitterly”, and they are chained to the benches until the ship sails away. No doubt memories of the delicious and intoxicating fruit haunted the crew for the rest of their lives. If this epic is taken as an account of true events, perhaps Odysseus rigged the island’s location a bit to ensure that no one else was ensnared by the lotus eaters.
The island of the lotus eaters appears again and again in songs, stories and myths, suggesting that the idea has a powerful influence on us even today. Some forms of this legend have appeared in different places such as Star Trek, Brave New World and The Lotos-Eaters, a famous poem by Tennyson.
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