Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouthNeither ancient literary sources nor archaeological finds indicate that the ritual of Charon's obol explains the modern-era custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, nor is the single coin said to have been placed under the tongue. See "Coins on the eyes?" below. of a dead person before burial. Greek and Latin literary sources specify the coin as an obol, and explain it as a payment or bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity."Ian Morris, Death-ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 106 online.
The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, though it is also found in the ancient Near East. In Western Europe, a similar usage of coins in burials occurs in regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures, and among the Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century.
Although archaeology shows that the myth reflects an actual custom, the placement of coins with the dead was neither pervasive nor confined to a single coin in the deceased's mouth.Gregory Grabka, "Christian Viaticum: A Study of Its Cultural Background," Traditio 9 (1953), 1–43, especially p. 8; Susan T. Stevens, "Charon’s Obol and Other Coins in Ancient Funerary Practice," Phoenix 45 (1991) 215–229. In many burials, inscribed metal-leaf tablets or exonumia take the place of the coin, or gold-foil crosses during the early Christian period. The presence of coins or a coin-hoard in Germanic ship-burials suggests an analogous concept.Discussed under "Archaeological evidence".
The phrase "Charon's obol" as used by archaeologists sometimes can be understood as referring to a particular religious rite, but often serves as a kind of shorthand for coinage as grave goods presumed to further the deceased's passage into the afterlife.Morris, Death-ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity, p. 106, noting in his skeptical discussion of "Who Pays the Ferryman?" that "coins may have paid the ferryman, but that is not all that they did." See also Keld Grinder-Hansen, "Charon’s Fee in Ancient Greece?" Acta Hyperborea 3 (1991), p. 215, who goes so far as to assert that "there is very little evidence in favour of a connection between the Charon myth and the death-coin practice", but the point is primarily that the term "Charon’s obol" belongs to the discourse of myth and literature rather than the discipline of archaeology. In Latin, Charon's obol sometimes is called a , or "sustenance for the journey"; the placement of the coin on the mouth has been explained also as a seal to protect the deceased's soul or to prevent it from returning.
Terminology
The coin for Charon is conventionally referred to in Greek literature as an (), one of the basic denominations of ancient Greek coinage, worth one-sixth of a drachma.Depending on whether a copper or silver standard was used; see Verne B. Schuman, "The Seven-Obol Drachma of Roman Egypt," Classical Philology 47 (1952) 214–218; Michael Vickers, "Golden Greece: Relative Values, Minae, and Temple Inventories," American Journal of Archaeology 94 (1990), p. 613, notes 4 and 6, pointing out at the time of writing that with gold at $368.75 per ounce, an obol would be worth 59 cents (U.S. currency). Among the Greeks, coins in actual burials are sometimes also a () or other relatively small-denomination gold, silver, bronze or copper coin in local use. In Roman literary sources the coin is usually bronze or copper.For instance, Propertius 4.11.7–8; Juvenal 3.267; Apuleius, Metamorphoses 6.18; Ernest Babelon, Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines, vol. 1 (Paris: Leroux, 1901), p. 430. From the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE in the Black Sea region, low-value coins depicting arrowheads or dolphins were in use mainly for the purpose of "local exchange and to serve as ‘Charon's obol.‘"Sitta von Reden, "Money, Law and Exchange: Coinage in the Greek Polis," Journal of Hellenic Studies 117 (1997), p. 159. The payment is sometimes specified with a term for "boat fare" (in Greek , Latin ); "fee for ferrying" ( or ); or "waterway toll" (Latin ).
is defined by the Christian-era lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria as the coin put into the mouth of the dead; one of the meanings of is given as "the obol for the dead". The Suda defines as a coin traditionally buried with the dead for paying the ferryman to cross the river Acheron,Entry on Δανάκη, Suidae Lexicon, edited by A. Adler (Leipzig 1931) II 5f., as cited by Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," p. 8. and explicates the definition of as a ferryman's fee with a quotation from the poet Callimachus, who notes the custom of carrying the in the "parched mouths of the dead."Hesychius, entry on Ναῦλον, Lexicon, edited by M. Schmidt (Jena 1858–68), III 142: τὸ εἰς τὸ στόμα τῶν νεκρῶν ἐμβαλλόμεν νομισμάτιον; entry on Δανάκη, Lexicon, I 549 (Schmidt): ἐλέγετο δὲ καὶ ὁ τοῖς νεκροῖς διδόμενος ὀβολός; Callimachus, Hecale, fragment 278 in the edition of Rudolf Pfeiffer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), vol. 1, p. 262 (= Schneider frg. 110), with an extensive note (in Latin) on the fare and the supposed exemption for residents of Hermione; Suidae Lexicon, entry on Πορθμήϊον, edited by A. Adler (Leipzig 1935) IV 176, all cited by Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," pp. 8–9.
Charon's obol as viaticum
In Latin, Charon's obol is sometimes called a ,Plautus, Poenulus 71 (late 3rd–early 2nd century BC), where a rich man lacks the viaticum for the journey because of the stinginess of his heir; Apuleius, Metamorphoses 6.18 (2nd century A.D.), discussed below. which in everyday usage means "provision for a journey" (from , 'way, road, journey'), encompassing food, money and other supplies. The same word can refer to the living allowance granted to those stripped of their property and condemned to exile,As in Seneca, Ad Helviam matrem de consolatione 12.4; see Mary V. Braginton, "Exile under the Roman Emperors," Classical Journal 39 (1944), pp. 397–398. and by metaphorical extension to preparing for death at the end of life's journey.Entry on viaticum, Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982, 1985 printing), p. 2054; Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1879, 1987 printing), p. 1984. Cicero, in his philosophical dialogue On Old Age (44 BCE), has the interlocutor Cato the Elder combine two metaphors — nearing the end of a journey, and ripening fruit — in speaking of the approach to death:
Drawing on this metaphorical sense of "provision for the journey into death," ecclesiastical Latin borrowed the term for the form of Eucharist that is placed in the mouth of a person who is dying as provision for the soul's passage to eternal life.Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," p. 27; Stevens, "Charon’s Obol," pp. 220–221. The earliest literary evidence of this Christian usage for appears in Paulinus's account of the death of Saint Ambrose in 397 AD.Paulinus of Nola, Vita Sancti Ambrosii 47.3, Patrologia Latina 14:43 (Domini corpus, quo accepto, ubi glutivit, emisit spiritum, bonum viaticum secum ferens). The Eucharist for the dying was prescribed by the First Council of Nicaea in 325, but without using the term viaticum. Discussion in Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Cornell University Press 1990), p. 33. Paxton, along with other scholars he cites, holds that administering the Eucharist to the dying was already established practice in the 4th century; Éric Rebillard has argued that instances in the 3rd-4th centuries were exceptions, and that not until the 6th century was the viaticum administered on a regular basis (In hora mortis: Evolution de la pastorale chrétienne de la mort aux IV et V siècles dan l’Occident latin, École Française de Rome 1994). See also Paxton's review of this work, American Historical Review 101 (1996) 1528. Those who view the practice as earlier think it was used as a Christian alternative to Charon's obol; for those who hold that it is later, the viaticum is seen as widely administered only after it was no longer regarded as merely a disguised pre-Christian tradition. Further discussion under Christian transformation below. The 7th-century offers an etymological explanation: "This word ‘viaticum’ is the name of communion, that is to say, ‘the guardianship of the way,’ for it guards the soul until it shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ."Synodus Hibernensis (preserved in the 8th-century Collectio canonum Hibernensis), book 2, chapter 16 (p. 20 in the edition of Wasserschleben), cited in Smith, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, p. 2014. Thomas Aquinas explained the term as "a prefiguration of the fruit of God, which will be in the Promised Land. And because of this it is called the , since it provides us with the way of getting there"; the idea of Christians as "travelers in search of salvation" finds early expression in the Confessions of St. Augustine.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 3, question 73, article V, discussed in Benjamin Brand, "Viator ducens ad celestia: Eucharistic Piety, Papal Politics, and an Early Fifteenth-Century Motet", Journal of Musicology 20 (2003), pp. 261–262, especially note 24; see also Claude Carozzi, "Les vivants et les morts de Saint Augustin à Julien de Tolède," in Le voyage de l’âme dans l’Au-Delà d’après la littérature latine (Ve–XIIIe siècle), Collection de l’École Française de Rome 189 (Palais Farnèse, 1994), pp. 13–34 on Augustine.
An equivalent word in Greek is (); like , the word is used in antiquity to mean "provision for a journey" (literally, "something for the road," from the prefix , "on" + , "road, way")Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1843, 1985 printing), entry on ἐφοδεία, pp. 745–746. and later in Greek patristic literature for the Eucharist administered on the point of death.Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," p. 27.
In literature
Greek and Roman literary sources from the 5th century BCE through the 2nd century AD are consistent in attributing four characteristics to Charon's obol: it is a single, low-denomination coin; it is placed in the mouth; the placement occurs at the time of death; it represents a boat fare.Susan T. Stevens, "Charon's Obol", p. 216.
Greek epigrams that were literary versions of epitaphs refer to "the obol that pays the passage of the departed,"Anthologia Palatina 7.67.1–6; see also 7.68, 11.168, 11.209. with some epigrams referring to the belief by mocking or debunking it. The satirist Lucian has Charon himself, in a dialogue of the same name, declare that he collects "an obol from everyone who makes the downward journey."Lucian, Charon 11. In an elegy of consolation spoken in the person of the dead woman, the Augustan poet Propertius expresses the finality of death by her payment of the bronze coin to the infernal toll collector (portitor).Propertius, Book 4, elegy 11, lines 7–8. For underworld imagery in this poem, see Leo C. Curran, "Propertius 4.11: Greek Heroines and Death," Classical Philology 63 (1968) 134–139. Several other authors mention the fee. Often, an author uses the low value of the coin to emphasize that death makes no distinction between rich and poor; all must pay the same because all must die, and a rich person can take no greater amount into death:Stevens, "Charon’s Obol," pp. 216–223, for discussion and further examples.