Perceptions of time also differ in the lands of Tartarus (doom) and Elysium (paradise). In Tartarus, time is reanimated, for the spirits are faced with the prospect of judgment and ultimate doom. It is clear that time can only really be felt when a certain end point, either death or resurrection, exists on which the spirit can fixate. Without that, the eternal nature of existence – whether eternal suffering or eternal joy – explodes any sense of time. Time, then, is revealed as a human characteristic, foremost a characteristic of a changing body, a deteriorating physicality. Time exists for those in Tartarus because they will suffer punishment, physical bodily punishment that will ultimately lead to annihilation.

In Elysium, time has shed its meaning, for there is no process of physical decay here. Elysium is a place free of degeneration, a place of eternal joy, pleasure, and relaxation. Virgil’s description captures such a state of resounding timelessness: “And now Aeneas sees in the valley’s depths as sheltering grove with rustling wooded brakes and the Lethe flowing past the homes of peace. Around it hovered numberless races, nations of souls like bees in meadowlands on a cloudless summer day that settle in flowers, riots of color, swarming around the lilies’ lustrous sheen, and the whole field comes alive with a humming murmur.” Without body, these souls are also without a sense of time. Only when granted a second body will time begin for them again. As for the other inhabitants of Elysium, like Anchises, they exist on the path toward absolute purity. Anchises tells his son, “Then we are sent to Elysium’s broad expanse, a few of us even hold these fields of joy till the long days, a cycle of time seen through, cleanse our hard, inveterate stains and leave us clear ethereal sense, the eternal breath of fire purged and pure.” Ultimate perfection, in other words, requires absolute separation of spirit and body – and since time is fixed to the physical, bodily realm, time ceases in this pure state. Immortality of the spirit comes from the cessation of time, itself caused by the purification of soul by the cleansing of all traces of the body.