Fortunatae. Known also as "the Islands of the Blessed." The early Greeks, as we learn from Homer, placed the Elysian fields, into which favored heroes passed without dying, at the extremity of the earth, near the River Oceanus. In poems later than Homer, an island is spoken of as their abode; hence when certain islands were discovered in the ocean, off the western coast of Africa, the name of Fortunatae Insulae was applied to them. They are now called the Canary and Madeira Islands.
