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As this shrub is found in Tunis, and also in the negro kingdoms, and as it furnishes the natives of the latter with a food resembling bread, and also with a sweet liquor which is much relished by them, there can be little doubt of its being the lotus mentioned by Pliny as the food of the Libyan Lotophagi.
Tennyson lives in the land of the Lotophagi, in the Arabian Nights of the Bagdad of Caliph Haroun, and in the orchard lawns of King Arthur's Avalon. So, too, Longfellow must inhale the golden legendary air of the Past. The mere humanitarian bards, who try to make modern life trip to the music of trochees, dactyles, and spondees, fail miserably. Industrialism is not poetical.
Odysseus relates, first, what befell him amongst the Cicones at Ismarus; secondly, amongst the Lotophagi; thirdly, how he was used by the Cyclops Polyphemus. And Odysseus of many counsels answered him saying: 'King Alcinous, most notable of all the people, verily it is a good thing to list to a minstrel such as this one, like to the gods in voice.
Have you noticed, my dear, how bland and dreamy is the air? On such an afternoon one is content to be in Virginia, and out of the world. It is a very land of the Lotophagi, a lazy clime that Ulysses touched at, my love." The equipage slowly climbed an easy ascent, and as slowly descended to the level again.
"It produced in them," says Burton, "a manner of dreamy enjoyment, which exaggerated by time and distance, may have given rise to that splendid myth the Lotos and the Lotophagi. Their chief commodity was coffee, their favourite drink an aphrodisiac made of honey dissolved in hot water, and strained and fermented with the bark of a tree called kudidah."
Edna had endeavored to realize and remember what her Bible first taught her, and what moralists of all creeds, climes and ages, had reiterated that human life was at best but "vanity and vexation of spirit," that "man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward"; yet as she stood on the line, narrow and thin as Al-Sirat, that divides girlhood and womanhood, all seemed to her fresh, pure heart as inviting and bewitching as the magnificent panorama upon which enraptured lotophagi gazed from the ancient acropolis of Cyrene.
It seems to produce in them a manner of dreamy enjoyment, which, exaggerated by time and distance, may have given rise to that splendid myth the Lotos, and the Lotophagi.
Even Homer in his time has made the Cyclops, who were flesh eaters, horrid monsters of men, and the Lotophagi, he has described as a people so amiable, that when strangers had once become acquainted with them, and tasted the fruits on which they lived, they even forgot their native country to take up their abode with their hosts.
Hordes of half-naked Gauls were ranged next to companies of white-clothed Iberians, and savage Ligurians next to the far-travelled Nasamones and Lotophagi.
As this shrub is found in Tunis, and also in the Negro kingdoms, and as it furnishes the natives of the latter with a food resembling bread, and also with a sweet liquor, which is much relished by them, there can be little doubt of its being the lotus mentioned by Pliny as the food of the Lybian Lotophagi.
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