Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study...

But most commonly he is the warrior preëminent in all manner of prowess—archer, wrestler, horseman. Once a bride boasted that she had no fear of Charos, for that her brothers were men of valour and her husband a hero; then came Charos and shot an arrow at her, and her beauty faded; a second and a third arrow, and he stretched her on her death-bed[202]. Often in the pride of strength have young warriors laughed Charos to scorn; then has he come to seize the strongest of them, and though the warrior strain and struggle as in a wrestling-match, yet Charos wearies not but wins the contest by fair means or foul: for he is no honourable foe, but dishonest above thieves, more deceitful than women[203]: he seizes his adversary by the hair and drags him down to Hades. Even more striking is the picture of Charos as horseman riding forth on his black steed to the foray, and it is this conception which has inspired one of the finest achievements of the popular muse:—

At first sight then the Charos of modern Greece would seem to have little in common with the Charon of ancient Greece beyond the name and some connexion with death: and Fauriel, in the introduction to his collection of popular songs, pronounces the opinion that in this case the usual tendencies of tradition have been reversed, in that it is the name that has survived, while the attributes have been changed[205]. To this judgement I cannot subscribe. I suspect that in ancient times the literary presentation of Charon was far more circumscribed than the popular, and that out of a profusion of imaginative portraitures as varied as those seen in the folk-songs of to-day one aspect of Charon became accepted among educated men as the correct and fashionable presentment. Hades was, in literature, the despot of the lower world, and for Charon no place could be found save that of ferryman. But this, I think, was only one out of the many guises in which the ancient Charon was figured by popular imagination; for at the present day the remnants of such a conception are small, in spite of the fact that there has remained a custom which should have kept it alive—the custom of putting a coin in the mouth of the dead.

Only in one folk-song, recorded from Zacynthos, can I find the old literary representation of Charon as ferryman of the Styx unmistakably reproduced. The following is a literal rendering:—‘Across the river that none may ford Charos was passing, and one soul was on the bank and gave him greeting. “Good Charos, long life to thee, well-beloved; take me, even me, with thee, take me, dear Charos! A poor man’s soul was I, even of a poor man and a beggar; men left me destitute and I perished for lack of a crumb of barley-bread. No last rites did they give me, they gave me none, poor soul, not even a farthing in my mouth for thee who dost await me. Poor were my children, poor and without hope; destitute were they and lay in death unburied, poor souls. Them thou did’st take, good Charos, them thou did’st take, I saw thee, when thy cold hand seized them by the hair. Take me too, Charos, take me, take me, poor soul; take me yonder, take me yonder, no other waiteth for thee.” Thus cried to him the poor man’s soul, and Charos made answer, “Come, soul, thou art good, and God hath pitied thee.” Then took he the soul and set her on the other bank, and spreading then his sail he sped far away[206].’

In another song[207] of the same collection, hailing also from Zacynthos, there may be a reminiscence of the same old tradition. In it Charos has a caïque with black sails and black oars and goes to and fro—whence and whither is not told—with cargoes of the dead. But more probably the imagery is borrowed from seafaring; the Greek peasant would hardly imagine a caïque plying on a river; the streams of his own country will seldom carry even a small bark. A sea-voyage on the other hand is, especially in the imagination of islanders, the most natural method of departure to a far-off country. From the sea certainly comes the metaphor in a funeral dirge from Zacynthos in which the mourner asks of the dead,

Now in another dirge[210] also heard by Schmidt in the same island, this idea is worked out even more fully: the mother cries to the master of the ship that bears away her lost son not to sell him, and offers high ransom for him; but the dead man in answer bids her keep her treasure; ‘not till the crow doth whiten and become a dove, must thou, mother mine, look for me again.’ Clearly the imagery is borrowed not from the ferry-boat of Charon plying for hire, but from a descent of pirates who carry men off to hold them to ransom or to sell them for slaves. In neither dirge is Charos actually named, but doubtless he is understood to be the captain of the pirates; for in more than one dirge of Laconia and Maina he is explicitly called κουρσάρος, a corsair[211].

Here then we have yet another presentation of the modern Charos; but of Charon the ferryman there is no sure remembrance except in one song from Zacynthos. Nor again, save in that one song, is the river of death imagined as an impassable barrier; it is rather a stream of Lethe: no boatman is needed to carry the dead across; but mention is made only of ‘the loved ones, that pass the river and drink the water thereof, and forget their homes and their orphan children[212]’—just as in the mountains there are ‘springs in marble grots, whereat the wild sheep drink and remember no more their lambs[213].’ It is the drinking of the water, not the passing of the stream, which frees the dead from aching memories: the picture is wholly different from that of a river which cannot be crossed but by grace of the ferryman.

The general oblivion into which the ancient conception of Charon has fallen is the more remarkable, as I have said, in view of the survival of a custom which in antiquity was closely associated with it. In parts of Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor the practice prevails[214], or till recently prevailed, of placing in the mouth (or more rarely on the breast) of the dead a small coin, which in the environs of Smyrna is actually known as τὸ περατίκι, passage-money[215]. In the Cyclades and in parts of the Greek mainland I myself have met aged persons who could recall the existence of the custom: a century or two ago it was probably frequent. But there is less evidence that the coin was commonly intended for Charos. Protodikos indeed, the authority for the existence of the custom in Asia Minor, writing in 1860, says expressly that the coin was designed for Charos as ferryman; and the name of ‘passage-money’ locally given to the coin tends to confirm the statement of a writer whom I have found in some other matters inaccurate. Another authority[216] moreover, writing also in 1860, states that at Stenimachos in Thrace ‘until a short time ago’ the coin was laid in the mouth of the dead actually for Charos; nor can there be any question that the classical interpretation of the custom survived long in Zacynthos, as is evidenced by the complaint of the poor man’s soul in the song translated above,

Yet Schmidt, who recorded these lines from Zacynthos, found that the actual custom was barely remembered there. He met indeed, in 1863, one old woman aged eighty-two, who as a child had known the practice of putting a copper in the mouth of the dead as also that of laying a key on the corpse’s breast; but of the purpose of the coin she knew nothing; the key she believed to be useful for opening the gates of Paradise. For myself, though I have heard mention of the use of the coin, I have never known it to be associated with Charos. I incline therefore to the opinion that in most places where the custom is or has recently been practised, it has outlived the interpretation which was in classical times put upon it.

But was the classical interpretation a true index to the origin of the custom? Was it anything more than an aetiological explanation of a custom whose significance even in an early age had already become obscured by lapse of time? One thing at least has been made certain by the modern study of folklore, namely that a custom may outlive not only the idea which gave it birth but even successive false ideas which it has itself engendered in the minds of men who have sought vainly to explain it. When therefore Lucian[217] stated that ‘they put an obol in the dead man’s mouth as boat-fare for the ferryman,’ it is possible that he was recording a late and incorrect interpretation of a custom which had existed before the rôle of ferryman had ever been invented for Charon. Further if that interpretation had been in the main a literary figment, it would have been natural for the original meaning of the custom to be still remembered among the unlettered common-folk of outlying districts. There are plenty of cases in modern Greece in which different explanations of the same custom are offered in different localities. In spite therefore of the fact that one view only found expression in classical literature, there is no antecedent improbability in the supposition that an older view may have been handed down even to recent generations in the purer oral traditions of the common-folk.

Once only, from a fellow-traveller in the Cyclades, did I obtain any explanation at all of the use of the coin, εἶναι καλὸ γιὰ τἀερικά[218], ‘it is useful because of the aërial ones.’ This sounds vague enough, but nothing more save gestures of uncertainty could I elicit. Was the coin useful, in his view, as a fee to be paid to ‘the aërial ones’ on the soul’s journey from this world to the next, or as a charm against the assaults of such beings? That was the question to which I sought an answer from him, but in vain. For myself I cannot determine in which sense the dark saying was actually meant. The former would accord well with one local belief of the present day, if only my informant had specified one particular kind of aërial beings who are believed to take toll of departing souls; but to this I shall return in a later section of this chapter[219]. The second interpretation of the words, however, whether they were intended in that sense by the speaker or not, furnishes what will be shown by other evidence to be the key to the origin of the custom.

A coin is often used as a charm against sinister influences[220]. In this case then it may have been a prophylactic against aërial spirits. Why then is it generally put in the dead man’s mouth? Not, I think, because the mouth is a convenient purse, as seems to be assumed in the classical interpretation of the custom, but because the mouth is the entrance to the body. The peasants of to-day believe as firmly as men of the Homeric age that it is through the mouth that the soul escapes at death. The phrase μὲ τὴ ψυχὴ ’στὰ δόντια, ‘with the soul between the teeth,’ is the popular equivalent for ‘at the last gasp’; and in the folk-songs the same idea constantly recurs; ‘open thy mouth,’ says Charos to a shepherd whom he has thrown in wrestling, ‘open thy mouth that I may take thy soul[221].’ Now the passage by which the soul makes its exit, is naturally the passage by which evil spirits (or the soul[222], if it should return,) would make their entrance; and, as we shall see later, there is a very real fear among the peasantry that a dead body may be entered and possessed by an evil spirit. Clearly then the mouth, by which the spirit would enter, is the right place in which to lay the protective coin.

The interpretation which I suggest gains support from some points in modern usage. In Macedonia, according to one traveller[223], the coin which formerly used to be laid in the corpse’s mouth was Turkish and bore a text from the Koran, an aggravation of the pagan custom which was made a pretext for episcopal intervention[224]. Now clearly, if the coin had in that district been designed as payment for the services of Charos as ferryman, there would have been no motive for preferring one bearing an inscription from the Mohammedan scriptures, which assuredly could not enhance the coin’s value in the eyes of Charos: but if the coin was itself employed as a charm against evil spirits, the sacred text might well have been deemed to add not a little to its prophylactic properties. Thus the character of the particular type of coin chosen indicates that the coin in itself too was at one time viewed as a charm; a charm moreover whose effect would be precisely that of the key which in the island of Zacynthos was also laid upon the dead man’s breast; for the key was certainly not designed, as Schmidt’s informant would have it, to open the gates of Paradise, but, like any other piece of iron, served originally to scare away spirits. The use of a coin as well as of a key in that island was merely meant to make assurance doubly sure.

Again, in many places throughout Greece, where this use of a coin is no longer known, a substitute of more Christian character has been found. On the lips of the dead is laid either a morsel of consecrated bread from the Eucharist[225], or more commonly a small piece of pottery—a fragment it may be of any earthenware vessel—on which is incised the sign of the cross with the legend Ι. Χ. ΝΙ. ΚΑ. (‘Jesus Christ conquers’) in the four angles[226]. Here the choice of the inscribed words of itself seems to indicate the intention of barring the dead man’s mouth against the entrance of evil spirits; and as final proof of my theory I find that in both Chios[227] and Rhodes[228], where a wholly or partially Christianised form of the custom prevails, the charm employed is definitely understood by the people to be a means of precaution against a devil entering the dead body and resuscitating it. Nor must the mention of a devil in this connexion be taken as evidence that the Chian and Rhodian interpretation of the custom is not ancient. I shall be able to show in a later chapter that the idea of a devil entering the corpse is only the Christian version of a pagan belief in a possible re-animation of the corpse by the soul[229].

But there is yet another variety of the custom, in which no coin and no Mohammedan nor Christian[230] symbol is used, but a charm whose magic properties were in repute long before Mohammed, long before Christ, probably long before coinage was known to Greece. Again a piece of pottery is used, but the symbol stamped upon it is the geometrical figure , the ‘pentacle’ of mediaeval magic lore. In Greece it is now known as τὸ πεντάλφα, but of its properties, beyond the fact that it serves as a charm[231], the people have nothing to say. In the mediaeval and probably in the yet earlier magic of Europe and the East it is one of the commonest figures, appearing sometimes as Solomon’s seal, sometimes as the star which led the wise men to Bethlehem, sometimes, in black colouring, as a symbol of the principle of evil, and correspondingly, in white, as the symbol of the principle of good. But though the figure has been known to the magicians of many nations and many epochs, there is no reason to suppose that it is in recent times or from other races that the Greeks have learnt it: for it was known too by the ancient Greeks, who noted among its more intelligible properties the fact that the five lines composing it can be drawn without removing pencil from paper. The Pythagoreans, who called it the πεντάγραμμον[232], are known to have attached to it some mystic value. There is a reasonable likelihood therefore that the symbol has been handed down in Greece as a magical charm—for we have seen how many other methods of magic have survived—from the time of Pythagoras.

Further back we cannot penetrate; yet—vixere fortes ante Agamemnona, and there were professors of occult sciences before Pythagoras. Was it then he who first discovered the figure’s mystic value? Or did he merely adopt and interpret in his own way a symbol which for long ages before him had been endowed with magical powers? Was it perhaps this figure, graven on some broken potsherd, which long before coinage supplied a more ready charm protected the corpse from possession by evil spirits, or rather, in those days, from reanimation by the soul? Who shall say? The belief, which has found its modern expression in the engraving of Christian or Mohammedan texts on prophylactic coins or pottery and in barring with them the door of the lips which gives access to the corpse, is certainly primitive enough in character to date from the dimmest prehistoric age.

If my suggestion as to the origin of the custom is correct, it was only the accident of a coin being commonly used as the prophylactic charm, which caused the classical association of the custom with Charon; and, once disembarrassed of this association, the popular conception of Charon in antiquity is more easily studied.

The literary presentation of him in the guise of a ferryman only is a comparatively late development. The early poets know nothing of him whatever in any character. The first literary reference to him was apparently in the Minyad, an epic poem of doubtful but not early date, of which two lines referring to the descent of Theseus and Pirithous to the lower world ran thus: ‘There verily the ship whereon the dead embark, even that which the aged Charon as ferryman doth guide, they found not at its anchorage[233].’ These are the lines by which Pausanias believed that Polygnotus had been guided when painting the figure of Charon in his famous representation of the nether world at Delphi. Thenceforth this was the one orthodox presentation of Charon in both literature and art. Euripides and Aristophanes in numerous passages[234] both alike conform to it, and the painters of funeral vases were equally faithful.

But there is evidence to show that this was not the popular conception of Charon, or at any rate not the whole of it. Phrases occur (and were probably current in classical times) which seem to imply a larger conception of Charon’s office and functions. The ‘door of Charon’ (Χαρώνειος θύρα[235] or Χαρώνειον[236]) was that by which condemned prisoners were led out to execution. The ‘staircase of Charon’ (Χαρώνειος κλίμαξ[237]) was that by which ghosts in drama ascended to the stage, as if they were appearing from the nether world. To Charon likewise were ascribed in popular parlance many caverns of forbidding aspect, particularly those that were filled with mephitic vapours—Χαρώνεια βάραθρα[238], σπήλαια[239], ἄντρα[240]. Finally Χαρωνῖται is Plutarch’s[241] rendering of the Latin Orcini, the sobriquet given to the low persons whom Caesar brought up into the Senate. These uses point to a popular conception of Charon larger than classical art and literature reveal, and justify Suidas’ simple identification of Charon with death[242].