What is Elysium?
Elysium (more or less “paradise;” also “Elysian Fields”) was a part of the Underworld where the dead hoped to go once they were, obviously, dead. It was in a sense reserved for people who had managed heroic feats in their lives, as well as the virtuous. Elysium was referred to in the Odyssey, in comparison to the negative passage into the Underworld that the unfortunate had to descend through. In the Elysian fields, trees grew as well as reeds, but there were also the gates to Hades; here, in the Aeneid, Aeneas had an encounter with his father Anchises. These fields are in constant spring, have their own sun and stars.
