Elysium

Elysium, also called the Elysian Fields or Elysian Plain, is the happy land at the ends of the earth where a few favoured mortals live on after death in Greek myth. It first appears in Homer, where the gods send Menelaus there instead of letting him die. Later poets and Virgil moved it into the Underworld and opened it to the just (Homer, Odyssey 4.561–569; Virgil, Aeneid 6.637–678).

The Origin of Elysium

A Realm for the Blessed

In the Odyssey, the sea-god Proteus tells Menelaus that he will not die in Argos. The immortals will send him to the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys lives and where life is easiest for men. Menelaus is chosen because he has Helen as his wife and is therefore Zeus’ son-in-law (Homer, Odyssey 4.561–569). Homer does not say that anyone else goes there, and he does not describe it as a place for the dead: Menelaus is carried there without dying.

Hesiod tells a related story under another name. After the race of bronze, Zeus made a fourth and more just race, the divine race of heroes who are called demigods. Some of them died fighting at Thebes and at Troy; others Zeus settled at the ends of the earth, apart from men, on the Isles of the Blessed beside deep-swirling Oceanus. There they live free from care and the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit for them three times a year, and Cronus rules over them (Hesiod, Works and Days 156–173). Hesiod does not use the word Elysium, but later writers treat the Isles of the Blessed and the Elysian plain as the same kind of place.

Pindar joins the two. In his Second Olympian Ode, the wicked pay a penalty beneath the earth, while the good have sunlight in nights and days alike and a life without toil. Those who have three times kept their souls free from wrong, in both worlds, travel the road of Zeus to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of the blessed and golden flowers blaze. Rhadamanthys sits there as the assessor of Cronus, and Peleus, Cadmus and Achilles are counted among its people; Achilles was brought there by his mother, who persuaded Zeus (Pindar, Olympian 2.56–83).

Descriptions of Elysium

Homer’s Elysium has no snow, no heavy winter and no rain, and Oceanus sends up the clear breath of the west wind to refresh its people (Odyssey 4.566–568). Hesiod’s islands have fruit three times a year (Works and Days 172–173), and Pindar adds golden flowers that the blessed weave into garlands (Olympian 2.70–74).

The fullest picture is Roman. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas comes to glad meadows and the pleasant groves of the blessed, where a broader air clothes the fields in purple light and the dwellers have their own sun and stars. Some exercise on grassy wrestling grounds and play on the yellow sand, some dance and sing, and the Thracian priest Orpheus plays the seven notes of his lyre (Virgil, Aeneid 6.637–647).

Elysium in Mythology

Notable Residents

The sources name few residents. Menelaus is promised Elysium in Homer. Pindar names Peleus, Cadmus and Achilles on the island of the blessed (Olympian 2.78–80). In Apollonius’ Argonautica, Hera tells Thetis that her son Achilles will one day come to the Elysian plain and become the husband of Medea (Argonautica 4.811–815). In Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus says the gods honoured Achilles and sent him to the Isles of the Blessed (Plato, Symposium 179e–180b).

Heracles is not among them: Homer says that only his phantom is in Hades, while he himself feasts among the immortal gods and has Hebe as his wife (Odyssey 11.601–604).

The Path to Elysium

In Homer, Elysium is a gift of the gods to a kinsman of Zeus. By Pindar’s day, what counts is a just life. Plato’s myth in the Gorgias states it as a law dating from the time of Cronus: the man who has lived justly and piously goes after death to the Isles of the Blessed, where he lives free from evil, and the unjust man goes to the prison of Tartarus. Minos, Rhadamanthys and Aeacus judge them in a meadow where two roads divide (Plato, Gorgias 523a–524a).

Pindar also gives a rebirth tradition: souls that have kept themselves free from wrongdoing three times in each world, that is, through repeated lives, reach the island (Pindar, Olympian 2.68–71). Virgil has souls purified in the Underworld, and after a thousand years the god calls them to the river Lethe so that they may forget and want to return to bodies; only a few remain in the Elysian fields (Aeneid 6.743–751).

A Contrast to Tartarus

In Greek myth, Elysium is the opposite of Tartarus, the deep prison where Zeus keeps the Titans and the wicked. Virgil makes the contrast explicit at a fork in the road in the Underworld: the right-hand path leads to Elysium, the left to the punishments of Tartarus (Aeneid 6.540–543).

Elysium and the Asphodel Meadow

Elysium is not the ordinary home of the dead. In the Odyssey, the shades of the dead, including Achilles, Orion and the suitors, live in the Underworld on the meadow of asphodel (Odyssey 11.538–539, 11.572; 24.13–14). The Elysian plain lies on the earth, at its ends, and not in the house of Hades.

Misconceptions and Lesser-Known Facts

A common mistake is to think that every good person went to Elysium. In Homer, only Menelaus is promised it, and in Hesiod it is the demigod heroes who go to the islands. Only later, in Pindar, Plato and Virgil, does the idea extend to the just in general.

Another is that initiation in the mysteries is linked to Elysium. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter says that the man who has seen the rites of Eleusis is blessed, while the uninitiated does not share the same lot after death in the gloom (Hymn to Demeter 480–482), but the hymn does not mention Elysium.

Variations in Ancient Texts

The ancient sources do not agree on where Elysium lies. Homer puts it at the ends of the earth near Oceanus; Hesiod and Pindar put the Isles of the Blessed in the ocean at the earth’s edge; Virgil sets Elysium inside the Underworld, on one of the two roads that divide beyond the place of judgment (Aeneid 6.540–543, 6.637–678).

Elysium Sources

Homer, Odyssey 4.561–569, 11.538–539, 11.572, 11.601–604, 24.13–14; Hesiod, Works and Days 156–173; Pindar, Olympian 2.56–83; Plato, Gorgias 523a–524a, and Symposium 179e–180b; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.811–815; Homeric Hymn to Demeter 480–482; Virgil, Aeneid 6.540–543, 6.637–678, 6.743–751.

See Also: The Underworld, Hades, Tartarus, Achilles, Menelaus, Heracles