Charon's Obol
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Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, but examples are found also in the Near East, and later in Western Europe, particularly in the regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures and among Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century. In Greek and Latin literary sources from the 5th century BC through the 2nd century AD, it is commonly, and even…mehr

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Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, but examples are found also in the Near East, and later in Western Europe, particularly in the regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures and among Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century. In Greek and Latin literary sources from the 5th century BC through the 2nd century AD, it is commonly, and even comically, said to be 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. Archaeology shows that the myth reflects an actual custom, but also that the placement of coins with the dead was neither pervasive nor confined to a single coin in the deceased s mouth. 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 in the early Christian era.