When Odysseus and his men reach Ismarus, where the Ciconians live, they sack the city and kill the men they can find, rape the women, and steal all the treasure. Once everything is divvied up, he advises his crew to get back on their ships and leave at once, but they do not listen to him. While his crew is carousing that night, those men who escaped the city run for help, and those Ciconians...
When Odysseus and his men reach Ismarus, where the Ciconians live, they sack the city and kill the men they can find, rape the women, and steal all the treasure. Once everything is divvied up, he advises his crew to get back on their ships and leave at once, but they do not listen to him. While his crew is carousing that night, those men who escaped the city run for help, and those Ciconians attack Odysseus and his men, killing six from each ship.
Next, when Odysseus and his crew come to the land of the Lotus-Eaters, he takes a much more circumspect and careful approach. He sends only three men ashore to find out what the Lotus-eaters are like so that he does not endanger his entire crew. Here, such caution is warranted as he is able to wrestle those three men back to the ship after they've eaten the lotus flower. If his entire crew had ingested this food, they would all have wanted to stay there forever, and Odysseus might not have been able to physically overpower them all. He could, then, have lost his entire crew.
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