Charon at The Louvre, Paris

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Charon is the ferryman of Hades who carries sousl of the newly deceased across the river Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. The marble sculpture was carved by Charles-Francois Hutin (Paris, 1715 - Dresde, 1776), made for the Royal Academy in 1744. 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 Heracles, Orpheus, Aeneas, Theseus, Sisyphus, Dionysus, Odysseusand Psyche – journey to the underworld and return, still alive, conveyed by the boat of Charon.