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Key Details
Type
RealmMythology
Greek Pantheon
Realm
Mythological / Non-physical
About This Location
A meadow for a few
Homer does not send every hero to bliss. In Odyssey 4 Proteus tells Menelaus he will go to the Elysian plain at the world's end, because he is Helen's husband and Zeus's son-in-law. Pindar later opens a similar meadow to the initiated and the just. Virgil's Elysium in Aeneid 6 is already a Roman civic park of ancestors. Ordinary Greek dead go to Hades. Elysium is a privilege with shifting entrance rules, not a default afterlife.
Primary Sources
“The immortals will send you to the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth, where life is easiest for men.”
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