ELYSIUM or the Elysian Plain, or Fields, the pre-Hellenic paradise, identified by the Greeks with their own Islands of the Blessed. In Homer (Od., iv. 563) the Elysian Plain is a land of perfect happiness, ruled by Rhadamanthys, at the end of the earth, on the banks of the river Oceanus. Much the same description is given by Hesiod (Works and Days, 16 7) of the Islands of the Blessed. In Pindar (0lymp., ii. 67 et seq., frags. 129, 13o, von Christ) Rhadamanthys and Cronus (who is mentioned also in a doubtfully genuine line in Hesiod, loc. cit.) rule there. In the earlier authors, only those specially favoured of the gods enter; and, in Homer, they are carried there body and soul and made immortal. In Hesiod it is already a place for the blessed dead, and, from Pindar on, entrance is gained by a righteous life, a conception partly at least due to Orphism. In later authors, such as Virgil (Aen., vi. 637 et seq.), Elysium is part of Hades; originally it has nothing to do with it.