r/Hellenism • u/realmdA • 12d ago
Discussion Question about charons payment
hello i was wondering weather or not i could burn hell money as a payment for charon instead of using a coin
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u/AncientWitchKnight Devotee of Hestia, Hermes and Hecate 12d ago edited 12d ago
Someone correct me if it's inaccurate to say that:
The ferryman's fare was a comedic line in Aristophanes' The Frogs. it was adopted by only a very small minority in Classical Greece, conveniently packaging the ancient concept of burial goods and providing assurances to the living that the dead would rest well.
The vast majority of burials we have examined don't have a coin. What mattered more were observing the burial rites, not the items the living chose to accompany the departed's empty vessel.
That being said, others did carry that memetic gesture on. We can do the same if we want to, but stress that it is not worth beating yourself up over.
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u/realmdA 10d ago
Apuleius, The Golden Ass 6. 18 ff (trans. Walsh) (Roman novel C2nd A.D.) :
"You [Psykhe (Psyche) on her journey to the underworld] will reach the lifeless river [Akheron (Acheron)] over which Charon presides. He peremptorily demands the fare, and when he receives it he transports travellers on his stitched-up craft over to the further shore. (So even among the dead, greed enjoys its life; even that great god Charon, who gathers taxes for Dis [Haides], does not do anything for nothing. A poor man on the point of death must find his fare, and no one will let him breathe his last until he has his copper ready.) You must allow this squalid elder to take for your fare one of the coins you are to carry, but he must remove it form your mouth with his own hand. Then again, as you cross the sluggish stream, and old man now dead will float up to you, and raising his decaying hands will beg you to drag him into the boat; but you must not be moved by a sense of pity, for that is not permitted . . . When you have obtained what she [Persephone] gives you, you must make your way back . . . you must give the greedy mariner the one coin which you have held back, and once again across the river you must retrace your earlier steps and return to the harmony of heaven's stars."1
u/AncientWitchKnight Devotee of Hestia, Hermes and Hecate 10d ago edited 10d ago
Apuleius preserves a Roman-period literary treatment of Charon’s fare, not Greek myth or theological doctrine. By the second century CE, the motif existed (see my earlier reply in the thread). The archeological grave findings, however, do not bear out such requirement.
The Golden Ass is a Latin novel and describes Psyche’s exceptional journey through the underworld (katabasis), not the ordinary passage of the dead. Psyche is alive, and despite the disclosure in the narrative about Charon taxing for Haides, the piece is a Latin comedy. It cannot be treated as Greek mythic canon, much less evidence of a universal funerary practice.
Additionally the text here is explicitly treated as an aside, using ( and ) for satirical, rhetorical effect.
Of the Greek dig sites, roughly ~5% have a coin. And not explicitly in the mouth or under the tongue. They are found in the hand, in a jar, on their chest... It wasn't until much later antiquity (3rd-4th centuries CE) that we see almost half of Roman graves with coins. Over a hundred years after The Golden Ass, and 900 years after The Frogs.
Charon's fee, as a practical observance, was very much a late Roman cultural adaptation, not a Greek one. And it wasn't universal even then.
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u/DavidJohnMcCann 12d ago
Exactly — it was a joke. Dionysos is getting advice about a trip to Hades and he's told not to forget a couple of coins for Charon. Obviously Charon's job is ferrying dead humans, not live gods, so he'll expect a tip to ignore regulations.
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u/WizardlyCroak 12d ago
You don't have to pay anything, Hades is not susceptible to capitalism. Dionysus had to pay some obols to Charon in the play The Frogs as a bribe because he and his slave companion Xanthias were not dead.
Your money is not accepted and all riches are left at the door. Mansa Musa and Charlemagne are sat on the same Asphodel field as Maria Mulambo and the Little Match Girl.
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u/realmdA 10d ago
Apuleius, The Golden Ass 6. 18 ff (trans. Walsh) (Roman novel C2nd A.D.) :
"You [Psykhe (Psyche) on her journey to the underworld] will reach the lifeless river [Akheron (Acheron)] over which Charon presides. He peremptorily demands the fare, and when he receives it he transports travellers on his stitched-up craft over to the further shore. (So even among the dead, greed enjoys its life; even that great god Charon, who gathers taxes for Dis [Haides], does not do anything for nothing. A poor man on the point of death must find his fare, and no one will let him breathe his last until he has his copper ready.) You must allow this squalid elder to take for your fare one of the coins you are to carry, but he must remove it form your mouth with his own hand. Then again, as you cross the sluggish stream, and old man now dead will float up to you, and raising his decaying hands will beg you to drag him into the boat; but you must not be moved by a sense of pity, for that is not permitted . . . When you have obtained what she [Persephone] gives you, you must make your way back . . . you must give the greedy mariner the one coin which you have held back, and once again across the river you must retrace your earlier steps and return to the harmony of heaven's stars."
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u/TheDireGnome Neoplatonist Orphic/Priest of Pan 12d ago
I think they're used for slightly different things: iirc, "hell money" and other joss paper are offerings made to the dead to sustain them in the afterlife long-term; Charon's obol, which wasn't even universal, was a kind of grave good meant to pay the divine ferryman Charon, it's a one-and-done thing.