Elysium
Greek underworld
Residents
• Aeacus
• Cerberus
• Charon
• Hades
• Minos
• Persephone
• Rhadamanthus
Geography
• Acheron
• Asphodel
Meadows
• Cocytus
• Elysion
• Erebus
• Lethe
• Phlegethon
• Styx
• Tartarus
Famous Inmates
• Ixion
• Sisyphus
• Tantalus
• The Titans
In Greek mythology, Elysium
(Greek:
Ἠλύσια πεδία) was a section of the Under-
world (the spelling Elysium is a Latinization
of the Greek word Elysion). The Elysian
Fields, or the Elysian Plains, were the final
resting place of the souls of the heroic and
the virtuous.
Etymology
Elysium is an obscure name that evolved
from a designation of a place or person
struck by lightning, enelysion, enelysios.[1]
This could be a reference to Zeus, the god of
lightning, so "lightning-struck" could be say-
ing that the person was blessed (struck) by
Zeus (lightning). Scholars have also sugges-
ted that Greek Elysion may have instead
been derived from the Egyptian term ialu
(older iaru), meaning "reeds," with specific
reference to the "Reed fields" (Egyptian:
sekhet iaru / ialu), a paradisaical land of
plenty where the dead hoped to spend
eternity.
Ruler
The ruler of Elysium varies from author to
author; Pindar names the ruler as Kronos, re-
leased from Tartarus and ruling in a palace:
And those that have three times kept
to their oaths,
Keeping their souls clean and
pure,
Never letting their hearts be de-
filed by the taint
Of evil and injustice,
And barbaric venality,
They are led by Zeus to the end:
To the palace of Kronos
Other authors claim that Kronos remained in
Tartarus for all eternity, and the judge was
another, sometimes Rhadamanthys.
Classical literature
Two Homeric passages in particular estab-
lished for Greeks the nature of the Afterlife:
the dreamed apparition of the dead Patroclus
in the Iliad and the more daring boundary-
breaking visit in Book 11 of the Odyssey.
Greek traditions concerning funerary ritual
were reticent, but the Homeric examples en-
couraged other heroic visits, in the myth
cycles centered around Theseus and Her-
acles.[2][3]