Lotus-eaters

[3] In Homer's epic poem the Odyssey Book IX, Odysseus tells how adverse north winds blew him and his men off course as they were rounding Cape Malea, the southernmost tip of the Peloponnesus, headed westwards for Ithaca: I was driven thence by foul winds for a space of 9 days upon the sea, but on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower.

Then I told the rest to go on board at once, lest any of them should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting to get home, so they took their places and smote the grey sea with their oars.

[4]Herodotus, in the 5th century BC, was sure that they still existed in his day in coastal Libya: A promontory jutting out into the sea from the country of the Gindanes[5] is inhabited by the lotus-eaters, who live entirely on the fruit of the lotus-tree.

The Lotos-Eaters is a poem by Alfred Tennyson, describing a group of mariners who, upon eating the lotos, are put into an altered state and isolated from the outside world.

British romantic composer Hubert Parry wrote a half-hour choral setting of Tennyson's poem for soprano, choir, and orchestra.