What It Is
The lotus is the sweet fruit, like honey, of a flower that gives its name to the Lotus-eaters, the people who eat it. Odysseus reaches their land on the tenth day of the baleful winds that push him away from Ithaca after he rounds Cape Malea. The Lotus-eaters do no harm to the men the hero sends to explore: they offer them the lotus. Whoever tastes the fruit no longer wants to bring back news or to return, and wants to stay there among them, eating lotus, forgetful of the return.
Where It Appears
All of it happens in Book IX, in the account Odysseus gives the Phaeacians. He sends two men and a herald to learn what people live there:
τῶν δʼ ὅς τις λωτοῖο φάγοι μελιηδέα καρπόν, / οὐκέτʼ ἀπαγγεῖλαι πάλιν ἤθελεν οὐδὲ νέεσθαι, / ἀλλʼ αὐτοῦ βούλοντο μετʼ ἀνδράσι Λωτοφάγοισι / λωτὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι μενέμεν νόστου τε λαθέσθαι.(9.94-97), but whoever of them ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus no longer wanted to bring back word or to return, but wanted to stay right there among the Lotus-eaters, eating lotus and forgetting the homecoming.
Odysseus drags back to the ships, weeping, those who had eaten, ties them under the benches, and orders the rest to board quickly, so that no one, having eaten lotus, forgets the return. He had given the same rule at the opening of the account, when he described the homeland he refused to trade for Calypso and Circe:
τρηχεῖʼ, ἀλλʼ ἀγαθὴ κουροτρόφος· οὔ τοι ἐγώ γε / ἧς γαίης δύναμαι γλυκερώτερον ἄλλο ἰδέσθαι.(9.27-28), rugged, but a good nurse of young men; for my part I cannot see any other land sweeter than this one.
In Book X, forgetting returns in another form. Circe mixes deadly drugs into the wine, so that the companions forget their homeland, but the effect is not complete:
οἱ δὲ συῶν μὲν ἔχον κεφαλὰς φωνήν τε τρίχας τε / καὶ δέμας, αὐτὰρ νοῦς ἦν ἔμπεδος, ὡς τὸ πάρος περ.(10.239-240), they had the heads, the voice, the bristles, and the bodies of pigs, but their mind was steady, as before.
After a year in her house, it is the companions who draw Odysseus aside:
δαιμόνιʼ, ἤδη νῦν μιμνήσκεο πατρίδος αἴης, / εἴ τοι θέσφατόν ἐστι σαωθῆναι καὶ ἱκέσθαι / οἶκον ἐς ὑψόροφον καὶ σὴν ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν.(10.472-474), wretched man, now remember your native land, if it is fated that you be saved and reach the high-roofed house and your homeland.
In Book XXIII, on the night of the reunion, Odysseus tells Penelope the whole journey, and the land of the Lotus-eaters comes right after the Cicones.
What It Means
The Lotus-eaters plot no death; the danger is sweetness. The lotus wipes out the desire for the nostos, the return that is the subject of the poem, and for that reason Odysseus uses force against his own men: he ties them under the benches, giving as the reason, stated by him, that no one should forget the return. The homeland is worth more than sweetness, and the hero says so to rich hosts who shower him with gifts, which can be heard as courtesy and also as a warning that nothing they give replaces home.
The lotus has relatives in the poem. Calypso offers immortality, arguing with the years the fate still holds for him, and Odysseus concedes that Penelope is inferior and keeps wanting to return every day (Book V). Helen's drug, poured into the wine to take away pain and anger and make one forget all evils, serves to cheer the table in Sparta (Book IV). In every case the offer is of relief, and the refusal belongs to one who prefers the return.
The lotus is the opposite of two other things in the poem. Of Circe, who turns the companions into pigs without erasing their minds, and leaves them remembering without being able to act; and of Argos, who waits twenty years without forgetting and dies on seeing his master (Book XVII). The poem seems to measure each forgetting by what it does to the return: the lotus erases it without pain, Circe suspends it with pain, and Argos's memory waits.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Home, exile and return, Identity.
- Characters: Odysseus, Circe, Calypso.
- Neighboring symbols: the dog Argos, the memory that waits without fading, and the bed of olive wood, the place where the return arrives.