The original Odyssey, by the ancient Greek writer Homer, is largely about the Trojan War, which went on for years. According to the myth, the whole thing was kicked off when this guy Paris (who was from Troy) kidnapped Helen, who was married to Medelaus, the king of Sparta. One might wonder how exactly you sneak into Sparta, of all places, and kidnap the queen…but this may not have been entirely Paris’ fault; the Greek gods were always interfering in ridiculous but annoying ways, and according to the story Aphrodite made Helen fall in love with Paris. But never mind all that; the point here is that the story says that Paris gave Helen “nepenthes,” a drug that made her forget her sorrows. And presumably her old home, too.
“Nepenthes” is not plural, in spite of the “s” on the end. It’s a compound word made up of “ne-” (not) and “penthos” (grief). It’s been used in English since at least the 1500s, and even though the whole idea comes from a Greek myth, you can find actual recipes for making stuff called “nepenthes.” For example, Nicholas Culpeper wrote the 1653 book The Complete Herbal, in which he explains that to make “nepenthes”, you would: “Take of tincture of Opium made first with distilled Vinegar, then with spirit of Wine, Saffron extracted in spirit of Wine, of each an ounce, salt of Pearl and Coral, of each half an ounce, tincture of species Diambræ seven drams, Ambergris one dram: bring them into the form of Pills by the gentle heat of a bath.” And you have to admit, a mixture of opium and wine would probably really work to induce forgetfulness (or worse) in anybody.
But “nepenthes” has another meaning as well; it’s a whole family of plants called “pitcher plants” because they have leaves shaped like pitchers. Nepenthes plants are native to southeast Asia, for the most part. They were named by Linnaeus himself in 1753, by which time there were a number of trade routes between that region and Europe.
“Nepenthes” is still in use, but if you see it in anything written in the last couple of centuries, you’ll probably see it without the “s” as “nepenthe.” Edgar Allen Poe used it in The Raven in 1845: “Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore! Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
Isaac Asimov included it in The Robots of Dawn in 1983: “He was scarcely conscious of her now, for this utterly soft end of a hard day was as soporific as the fabled nepenthe…” (yeah, I know; it doesn’t sound much like robots).
But Asimov’s use of “nepenthe” is also paired with “soporific”. There may have been something about the 1500s that made English speakers especially drowsy, because that’s the period when “sopor” entered the language, same as “nepenthe.” And three related phrases appeared around the same time too: “sleeping sickness,” “sleeping evil,” and “sleeping disease.” “Drowsy” is also from that time.
“Sopor” is a direct borrowing from Latin; “sopor” is a Latin word for deep sleep. “Somnus” is Latin for regular sleep, and came to English by way of the Old French word “sompnolent.” You get only one guess about the time period it showed up in English. As for “drowsy,” its antecedents are less clear, but it might be related to the Old English word “drúsian,” which meant to sink, and evidently sometimes also meant to become slow or inactive.
It might be tempting to guess that all this lethargy came about because Homer’s Odyssey became available in English and people immediately started trying to mix up some nepenthes. But unfortunately for that theory, the Odyssey wasn’t translated into English until 1616, by George Chapman. Chapman was quite a well-known poet and playwright at the time, but he had terrible luck in patrons; they kept dying or going broke without paying him. For example, Prince Henry had promised to pay him 300 pounds plus a pension when he finished his translation of the Odyssey, but the prince died (at 18) four years before the translation was finished. Another patron, the Prince of Wales, also died young when Elizabeth the First had his head chopped off. Elizabeth I had that effect on quite a few people, but you can say at least one thing in her favor: soporific she was not!
