Charon- Greek SpiritSpirit"Ferryman of the Dead"

The Ferryman

Charon was a son of Nyx and Erebus. A grim, unkempt old man with flaming eyes and a filthy cloak knotted at his shoulder, he poled his dark boat across the rivers of the underworld, the Styx or the Acheron depending on the source. His passengers were the properly buried dead. Each carried an obol, a small coin placed in the mouth at burial. Those who could not pay — the unburied, or those whose families had neglected the rites — wandered the near shore for a hundred years before Charon would take them. Crowds of them pressed toward the water's edge, stretching their hands toward the far bank, and the ferryman drove them back with his pole.

The Living Who Crossed

No living soul was meant to board Charon's vessel. Orpheus broke the rule with music during his descent for Eurydice — he played his lyre, and the ferryman let him pass.

Heracles did not ask. When he descended to capture Cerberus, he cowed the old boatman into carrying him across by sheer force. Hades punished Charon with a year in chains for allowing it. After that, the ferryman turned away every living visitor on sight. When Aeneas appeared at the far shore with the Sibyl of Cumae, Charon refused him. He had not forgotten what Heracles and Theseus had cost him. But the Sibyl held up the Golden Bough, a token of divine will, and Charon bent to his oar without another word.

Psyche came prepared — two coins and two barley cakes, on the advice of a speaking tower. The coins were for Charon, one each way; the cakes were for Cerberus. In Aristophanes's Frogs, Dionysus descended to retrieve a dead poet. Charon took him across, but made the god row for himself while a chorus of frogs sang around the boat.