Isles of the Blest (t)
Isles of the Blest is a term first mentioned by Hesiod circa 700 BC and later in the 5th century BC, a hundred years before Plato, in one of the few fragments we have of a work called Atlantias by Hellanicus of Lesbos. The text relates “Poseidon mated with Celaeno, and their son Lycus was settled by his father in the Isles of the Blest and made immortal.”
Paul Dunbavin has pointed[099] out that Pindar the Greek poet again writing in the 5th century BC also refers to the Island of the Blest in terms that are indistinguishable from his description of the home of the Hyperboreans. Dunbavin has concluded further that Island of the Blest and the Elysian Fields or Elysium are the same place. Andrew Collins supports this idea[072] and adds the possibility that they may also identical with the Fortunate Isles.
Where Dunbavin concludes that the Isles of the Blest were located in what is now the British Isles, Collins favours them as an early reference to the Canaries, Madeiras or even Azores.