Asphodel Meadows

[3] The name of the land, inspired by the plant Asphodelus, appears in the literature as far back as Homer's Odyssey, where it features in Odysseus' survey of the underworld.

[5] A different proposal explains the name of the land as 'field of ashes' basing it on sphodelos or spodelos, an alternative version of the name[6] that could be related to "σποδός", spodós ('ashes', 'embers').

For later Greek poets the very ancient pre-Homeric association of the asphodel flower with a positive form of afterlife as well as the enlarged role of Elysium as it became the destination of more than just a few lucky heroes, altered the character of the meadows.

Greek poets who wrote after Homer's time describe them as untouched, lovely, soft and holy.

Such an evolutionary change is quite common: "Like most cultures throughout human history, both ancient and modern, the Greeks held complex and sometimes contradictory views about the afterlife".