Charon Charon In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (; Greek Χάρων) is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. In the catabasis mytheme, heroes – such as
Styx was primarily a feature in the afterworld of classical Greek mythology, similar to the Christian area of Hell in texts such as "The Divine Comedy" and "Paradise Lost". The ferryman Charon often is described as having transported the souls of the newly dead across this river into the underworld. Dante put Phlegyas as ferryman over the Styx and made it the fifth circle of Hell, where the wrathful and sullen are punished by being drowned in the muddy waters for eternity, with the wrathful fighting each other. In ancient times some believed that a coin (Charon's obol) placed in the