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.

[4] According to others, the unattractive plant was chosen by the Greeks because of its ghostly gray colour which is appropriate to the shadowy atmosphere 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.

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".