Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Greek poetry maps more than one happy afterworld. In Hesiod’s Myth of Ages, after Zeus ends the demigod heroes, some dwell carefree in the Isles of the Blessed beside deep-eddying Ocean: three times yearly the earth bears sweet fruit for them, and Cronus rules there (in the lines as transmitted). In the *Odyssey*, Proteus tells Menelaus he is not fated to die in Argos but will be conveyed by the gods to the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where lives Rhadamanthys, where there is no snow nor much winter nor rain, but Ocean always sends the whistling West Wind to cool men—because Menelaus has Helen and is son-in-law to Zeus. Pindar’s *Olympian* 2 elaborates an isle where the good enjoy sun below and above, flowers of gold, and Rhadamanthys as counselor under Cronus’s regime; those who thrice keep the soul from injustice take the road of Zeus to Cronus’s tower. Catalogue the Blessed Isles / Elysium as a local-eschatological entry gathering the main classical poetic versions, separate from underworld judges and from Titan Cronus’s earlier reign.