Charon

Lore & Background

Charon is first attested in the now fragmentary Greek epic poem Minyas, which includes a description of a descent to the underworld and possibly dates back to the 6th century BC. No ancient source provides a genealogy for Charon, except for one reference making him a son of Acmon, found in the entry 'Akmonides' in the lexicon of Hesychius, which is dubious and the text may be corrupt. In the 14th century, Dante Alighieri described Charon in his Divine Comedy, drawing from Virgil's depiction in Aeneid 6. Charon is the first named mythological character Dante meets in the underworld, in Canto III of the Inferno. Dante depicts him as having eyes of fire. The French artist Gustave Dore depicted Charon in two of his illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy. The Flemish painter Joachim Patinir depicted Charon in his Crossing the River Styx. The Spanish painter Jose Benlliure y Gil portrayed Charon in his La Barca de Caronte.

In Their Own Story

In Virgil's epic poem, Aeneid, the dead who could not pay the fee, and those who had received no funeral rites, had to wander the near shores of the Styx for one hundred years before they were allowed to cross the river. Charon also ferried the living mortals Heracles and Aeneas to the underworld and back again. In Seneca's tragedy Hercules Furens, Charon is described in verses 762–777 as an old man clad in foul garb, with haggard cheeks and an unkempt beard, a fierce ferryman who guides his craft with a long pole. When the boatman tells Heracles to halt, the Greek hero uses his strength to gain passage, overpowering Charon with the boatman's own pole. In the second century, Lucian employed Charon as a figure in his Dialogues of the Dead, most notably in Parts 4 and 10 ('Hermes and Charon' and 'Charon and Hermes').

Reader's Guide

Archaeology confirms that, in some burials, low-value coins known generically as Charon's obols were placed in, on, or near the mouth of the deceased, or next to the cremation urn containing the ashes. Most accounts, including Pausanias (10.28) and later Dante's Inferno (3.78), associate Charon with the swamps of the river Acheron. Ancient Greek literary sources such as Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, and Callimachus also place Charon on the Acheron. Roman poets, including Propertius, Ovid, and Statius, name the river as the Styx, perhaps following the geography of Virgil's underworld in the Aeneid, where Charon is associated with both rivers. The Etruscan death-demon Charun has a different origin and functions, being an assistant to Death as well as psychopomp and guardian, delivering the newly dead to the underworld by horseback or chariot.

Did You Know?

• Charon is first attested in the now fragmentary Greek epic poem Minyas, which possibly dates back to the 6th century BC.
• The name Charon is unexplained except via folk etymology which takes it as a proper noun from χάρων (charon), a poetic form of χαρωπός (charopós) 'flashing, amber-eyed'.
• In Virgil's Aeneid, the dead who could not pay the fee had to wander the near shores of the Styx for one hundred years before crossing.
• Charon, the largest moon of the dwarf planet Pluto, is named after him.
• The hadrosaurid Charonosaurus is named in Charon's honor because it was found along the banks of the Amur River in the Far East.