THE FERRYMAN AND HIS FEE: A STUDY IN ETHNOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND TRADITION BY L.

V. GRINSELL
i.
From about 500 B.c. onwards, the scene of Charon ferrying the dead
in his boat across the River Styx was represented on Greek funerary vases
and other objects, and described in Greek literature.
Attic figured vases of the type known as white-ground lekythoi, mostly
made during the fifth century B.C., and latterly for funerary uses only,
are often decorated with a painting of Charon receiving the dead into his
boat.
He is shown on ealier vases as a rough unkempt-looking Athenian
seaman wearing a reddish-brown garment, a pole in his right hand, and
receiving with his left hand the deceased, who is often led to him by
Hermes, conductor of souls. Later vases show Charon as a more kindly
and refined personage. Examples of these painted vases are to be seen
in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, in the Manchester Museum, the
British Museum, and elsewhere.10
An example sometime in a collection
in Athens showed the dead holding an obol in his fingers, which he is about
to hand to Charon." This scene occurs also on an ancient Greek terracotta
lamp. The scene of Charon in his boat occurs on a Greek funerary
altar at Milan, and on other monuments.
Turning to the literary evidence, we may note first that there are no
references to Charon in Homer. The earliest references are in the fifth
century B.C. poem called the Minyad and in Aeschylus' Septem contra
Thebas, 842, also fifth century B.C. It was, Pausanias believed, the poem
called the Minyad that inspired Polygnotus to paint a picture of Charon
in his boat, which Pausanias described in detail.'4 In the Aeneid, Book 6,
xli, Virgil (70-19 B.C.) gives a description of Charon which is very consistent
with the earlier representations on funerary lekythoi:
Charon there,
Grim ferryman, stands sentry. Mean his guise,
His chin a wilderness of hoary hair,
And like a flaming furnace stare his eyes.
Hung in a loop around his shoulders lies
A filthy gaberdine. He trims the sail,
And, pole in hand, across the water plies
His steel-grey shallop with the corpses pale,
Old, but a God's old age has left him green and hale.
This description may well have been in the mind of the German painter
Arnold B6cklin, when he painted his famous picture of Charon; and
reference should here be made, in passing, to the five versions of his
celebrated picture, the Isle of the Dead, which inspired musical compositions
by Max Reger, Rachmaninoff, and others.
It was said by VirgilJ5 that those who had not been honoured with a
funeral had to wait on the shore for a hundred years before being admitted
into Charon's boat.
Lucian, in his Dialogues of the Dead, written probably between A.D.
150 and 16o, gave anr amusing account of a day when Charon, finding
trade somewhat slack, spent the rest of the day being shown round this
world, to see how his customers spent their lives before requiring his
services. Lucian also described a heated scene when a dead person who
offered his obol, or two obols, was refused passage because the boat was

full. But Mycillus the cobbler, not having a coin, was permitted to help
in rowing the boat instead (Lucian, The Infernall Ferrie).
The earliest ancient Greek graves containing coins are about 470 B.C.
In those, the coin is usually placed in the grave only, or in the hand of the
dead; but from the fourth century B.C. onwards it became the almost
universal custom to place the coin in the mouth. This was because during
the 400 years or so before the Christian era it was customary for the
Athenians and many others to carry their small change wrapped up and
tucked into the cheek.
(...)
Charon in his barque is sometimes figured on Roman sarcophagi in
which both the art style and the subject are purely Greek,21 and there
are various illustrations of these scenes.22 A few cynical Romans would
have none of this superstition, and placed on their tombs inscriptions
such as these :
" There is no boat of Hades, no ferryman Charon."
" I shall not cross the waters of Acheron as a shade;
Nor shall I propel the dusky boat with my oar;
I shall not fear Charon with his face of terror."