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Charon (mythology)
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- See also Charon's obol.
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (Greek ?????; ) was the ferryman of Hades who carried souls of the newly deceased across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years.
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- See also Charon's obol.
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (Greek ?????; ) was the ferryman of Hades who carried souls of the newly deceased across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. In the catabasis mytheme, heroes — such as Heracles, Orpheus, Aeneas, Dionysus and Psyche — journey to the underworld and return, still alive, conveyed by the boat of Charon. No ancient source provides a genealogy for the ferryman.
Etymology of name
The name Charon is most often explained as a proper noun from ????? (charon), a poetic form of ?a??p?? (charopós), “of keen gaze”, referring either to fierce, flashing, or feverish eyes, or to eyes of a bluish-gray color. The word may be a euphemism for death. Flashing eyes may indicate the anger or irascibility of Charon as he is often characterized in literature, but the etymology is not certain. The ancient historian Diodorus Siculus thought that the ferryman and his name had been imported from Egypt.
Appearance and demeanor
Charon is depicted frequently in the art of ancient Greece. Attic funerary vases of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. are often decorated with scenes of the dead boarding Charon’s boat. On the earlier such vases, he looks like a rough, unkempt Athenian seaman dressed in reddish-brown , holding his ferryman's pole in his right hand and using his left hand to receive the deceased. Hermes sometimes stands by in his role as psychopomp. On later vases, Charon is given a more “kindly and refined” demeanor. Aristophanes, in The Frogs, had him spewing insults regarding people's girth.
In the 1st century B.C., the Roman poet Vergil describes Charon in the course of Aeneas’s descent to the underworld (Aeneid, Book 6), after the Cumaean Sibyl has directed the hero to the golden bough that will allow him to return to the world of the living:
- There Chairon stands, who rules the dreary coast -
- A sordid god: down from his hairy chin
- A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean;
- His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
- A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.
Dante Alighieri also described Charon in his Divine Comedy. He is the same as his Greek counterpart, being paid an obolus to cross Acheron. He is the first named character Dante meets in the underworld, in the third Canto of Inferno. Elsewhere, Charon appears as a cranky, skinny old man or as a winged demon wielding a double hammer, although Michaelangelo's interpretation shows differently. In modern times, he is commonly depicted as a living skeleton in a cowl, much like the Grim Reaper or Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
Underworld geography
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 Vergil’s underworld in the Aeneid, where Charon is associated with both rivers.
In Popular Culture
- In Max Payne, the cargo ship that Max has to infiltrate is called the Charon.
- A ghoul named Charon is one of the recruitable NPC's in Fallout 3.
- In Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass, an unnamed boatman ferries the protagonists Lyra and Will across a river to the land of the dead.
- Charon is featured in the video game, God of War: Chains of Olympus, where the player character, Kratos, kills him.
- "The Sails of Charon", a song by Scorpions from their 1978 album Taken by Force, references Charon and his ferry; the song is considered the signature performance of the band's former guitarist Ulrich "Uli Jon" Roth.
- In Eve Online a sci-fi MMORPG, the Charon is a capital class freighter vessel.
- In the video game Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Charon is one of several characters that can be summoned by the player during battle to damage enemies. He is described in the game as "the boatsman of the river Styx."
- In the 1997 Disney animated feature Hercules (1997 film), Charon appears to be a greenish skeleton.
- A large part of the Woody Allen film Scoop takes place on board Charon's boat.
- In the Novel by Rick Riordan, titled Percy Jackson and The Olympians, Charon is described as a tall African- American man with bleach blonde hair and a fondness for Italian suits.
- StarCraft: Brood War - Charon Boosters are an upgrade to the Goliath attack unit that gives an extra +3 range to Goliath Missiles
See also
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