SOURCE: "The Lotus-Eaters," in Folktales in Homer's "Odyssey, " Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973, pp. 3-21.

Page is a classics scholar and the author of the highly regarded Sappho and Alcaeus (1955). In the following excerpt from a lecture delivered in 1972, he speculates on the historical basis of the tale of the Lotus-Eaters.

Odyssey 9.80-104: Odysseus and his companions set sail from the coast of Thrace. Their course lay down the east coast of the Peloponnese, round its southern promontories, and up the west coast to Ithaca:

But as I was doubling Cape Malea, the waves and current and northwind drove me off course and drifted me away from Cythera. From there, for nine days I was swept over the fishy sea by ruinous winds; and on the tenth we landed in the country of the Lotus-Eaters, who live on a food of flowers. There we set foot on the...