The Islands of the Blest are reserved in Homer for certain favoured persons who do not share the fate of the majority, a shadow-life after death in the world below. They are conceived as actual places on the surface of the earth, somewhere in the western ocean, and life on them is described by Hesiod in the Works and Days . Achilles is not placed there by Homer, but other early writers admit him. Cf. Tennyson, Ulysses :
'It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles
And see the great Achilles whom we knew.'