Odyssey 4.564 · Book 4, lines 564–565
Where life is easiest
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ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς, τῇ περ ῥηίστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν·
the immortals will send you, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys is, and where life is easiest for men:
Word by word
The setting
Proteus completes the thought begun in the previous lines: the immortals will carry Menelaus to the Elysian plain, the realm of Rhadamanthys — a just judge and son of Zeus — where human life is at its easiest.
A note on this passage
The destination is named. It is not Olympus — Menelaus does not become a god — but a place at the edge of the world where the fair-haired Rhadamanthys already dwells and where living is easy. Homer sketches it lightly, by its one defining quality: ease.
This is the seed of everything later ages will call Elysium and the Isles of the Blest, but here it is bare and strange, mentioned once and never explained. What the poem stresses is comparison — ‘easiest for men’ — measuring this rest against the ordinary human life of toil the rest of the Odyssey is steeped in.
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