Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

A storm from the north drives Odysseus’s fleet for nine days; on the tenth they reach the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a flowery food. Odysseus sends three men inland as scouts (two companions and a herald). The Lotus-eaters do not mean to kill them; they give them lotus to taste. Whoever eats the honey-sweet fruit no longer wishes to report back or return home, but wants only to stay among the Lotus-eaters, feeding on lotus and forgetting nostos. Odysseus drags the weeping men back to the ships by force, binds them under the rowing-benches, and orders the rest to embark at once lest anyone else taste the lotus. They row away. The episode is the first supernatural threat to memory and will: not violence but pleasure that erases the desire for home. Catalogue it apart from the Cicones raid and from Circe’s later drugs, which transform the body rather than dissolve the wish to return.