The Adventures of Ulysses

The Land of the Dead is the underworld where people’s souls go after they die. It’s a dark place illuminated by a gray, foggy light, coursed through by the Styx, a river lined by black and white trees. Ulysses travels west with his crew to the end of the earth and follows the waters down into the underworld. There, he interviews several ghosts, including his mother, then Achilles, Ajax, and the blind prophet Teiresias; each gives him warnings about his future, advice that proves correct and useful.

The Lotus Eaters live in Lotusland in the country of Libya. They eat lotus flowers, which make them sleep all day and dream. The flowers were the idea of the god Morpheus, who distributes sleep to humans and loves to watch their dreams. When Ulysses’s men stumble, exhausted, onto the beach at Lotusland, the Lotus Eaters place lotus blossoms all around the men so they can enjoy perpetual sleep. Morpheus spies on their dreams, adjusting them so the men don’t dream of the horrors of war. Ulysses realizes that the blossoms will keep the men trapped there forever, and he carries his sleeping crew back to their ships and sails them out to sea