From the 6th to the 4th centuries BC 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.‘' The payment is sometimes specified with a term for 'boat fare' (in Greek naulon, ναῦλον, Latin naulum) 'fee for ferrying' ( porthmeion, πορθμήϊον or πορθμεῖον) or 'waterway toll' (Latin portorium). In Roman literary sources the coin is usually bronze or copper. Among the Greeks, coins in actual burials are sometimes also a danakē (δανάκη) or other relatively small-denomination gold, silver, bronze or copper coin in local use. The coin for Charon is conventionally referred to in Greek literature as an obolos ( Greek ὀβολός), one of the basic denominations of ancient Greek coinage, worth one-sixth of a drachma. Medusa coin from the Black Sea region, of a type sometimes used as Charon’s obol, with anchor and crustacean on reverse In Latin, Charon's obol sometimes is called a viaticum, 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. 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. The presence of coins or a coin-hoard in Germanic ship-burials suggests an analogous concept. In many burials, inscribed metal-leaf tablets or Exonumia take the place of the coin, or gold-foil crosses during the early Christian period. 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.Īlthough 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. The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, though it is also found in the ancient Near East. Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called 'the most famous grave goods from antiquity.'

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. Charon and Psyche (1883), a pre-Raphaelite interpretation of the myth by John Roddam Spencer StanhopeĬharon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial.

Tiny token empires dionysus