Elysium

Elysium, also known as the Elysian Fields, in Greek mythology, a pre-Hellenic paradise, a land of perfect peace and happiness. In the works of Homer, Elysium was a land at the farthest and westernmost edge of the world to which the great heroes were carried, body and soul, and made immortal. There they were free to pursue their favorite activities, and worries and illness were unknown. Soon, however, Elysium came to be regarded as the abode of the blessed dead, where the souls of dead heroes, poets, priests, and others lived in perfect happiness, surrounded by grass, trees, and gentle winds and enveloped in rose-tinted, perpetual light.In Roman mythology, Elysium was a part of the underworld and a place of reward for the virtuous dead. For some it was only a temporary paradise. At the edge of its soft, green meadows flowed the Lethe, river of forgetfulness, from which all souls returning to life in the world above had to drink.

The River Lethe

Lethe, in Greek mythology, the river of forgetfulness, situated in the underworld. The spirits of the dead drank from its waters to forget the sorrows of their earthly life before entering Elysium. When the Trojan prince Aeneas visited the world of the dead, he found a great number of souls wandering on the banks of the stream. His father, Anchises, with whom he was joyously reunited, told him that before these spirits could live again in the world above, they must drink of the river of oblivion to forget the happiness they had experienced in Elysium.