He has a rough, unkempt appearance including a long, thick beard. These images often show Charon in the guise of a human boatman.
Funerary vases often show scenes of the dead stepping onto Charon’s boat as their last action in the mortal realm. The only way to safely do so was on Charon’s ferry.īecause of his role in transporting souls to the afterlife, Charon was depicted often in ancient Greek art. To cross into the realm of Hades, the souls had to go across the River Acheron. Sometimes accompanied by Hermes, he took the souls of the dead into the Underworld. Like the other children of Erebus, his mother was the primordial night goddess Nyx.Ĭharon served as a psychopomp, or a guide to the dead. He was the ferryman who took the souls of the dead into the realm of Hades.Ĭharon was usually said to be a son of Erebus, the primordial god of darkness.
One of the most well-known gods of the Greek Underworld in modern culture is Charon. So where did the beliefs about Charon come from? The ferryman of Greek mythology may have several different sources. The parallels between the ferryman of Hades and psychopomps of other cultures were too obvious to ignore. Nor was Charon unique to ancient Greek culture.Įven in the 1st century BC, historians proposed that Charon was not an exclusively Greek character. The idea of putting a coin in a dead man’s mouth to pay Charon was not, however, a widespread tradition in Greece. As the link between the world of the living and the realm of Hades, he featured heavily in Greek art and literature throughout history. In ancient Greece, that ferryman was Charon. This is to pay the ferryman who escorts the soul into the land of the dead. In some parts of the world today, it is still customary to be buried with a coin.
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