ELISI, CAMPI. - A place where the ancient Greeks imagined that certain favorites of the gods, of whom they were often descendants or relatives, were transported, body and soul. Later beliefs placed the heroes of mythology and history there as well: Achilles, Diomedes, Menelaus, etc.
Some ancients separate the E. from the rest of the underworld and place them at the edge of the earth or in the Ocean (in this case they are identified with the Islands of the Blest) or in the sky. For others (Aristophanes, Virgil) they are part of the underworld and are imagined underground. There was perfect material and moral happiness, without worries or work obligations, cheered by wine, music, and dances; the Attic poets who describe it in the 5th-4th centuries BC take the Eleusinian initiation as their model. At the head of the E. were Rhadamanthus or Cronus or both. According to some modern scholars, the name and concept of the C. E. are pre-Hellenic. The Romans followed the Greeks in their depiction of the E.