Charon – The Ferryman of the Dead

Here is Charon, ferryman of the dead in Ancient mythology, as he steers his boat in the underworld along the river Styx. The Greeks and Romans who believed in this underworld also subscribed to a gloomy or frightening view of the afterlife, one which humans were subject to the whims of the Gods, who also controlled the fortunes of humans in the world of the living. One school of ancient philosophers who opposed this vision of causality were the Epicurians, who taught that the entire cosmos was made up only of atoms and the void in between atoms. In this view, there was no underworld, no immortal souls, no Gods pulling the fates of humans like puppeteers . . . The Roman poet Lucretius outlines this philosophy in his poem “On the Nature of Things,” and for him, these ideas are a source of great comfort. To quote Lucretius: “And verily, those tortures said to be in Archeron, the deep, they all are ours here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed with baseless terror, as the fables tell, fears the huge boulder hanging in the air: but, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods urges morality, and each one fears such fall of fortune as may chance to him.” (Book 3.978-3.983). 

 

And the Latin, Perseus.Tufts.edu: “Atque ea ni mirum quae cumque Acherunte profundo prodita sunt esse, in vita sunt omnia nobis. Nec miser inpendens magnum timet aere saxum Tantalus, ut famast, cassa formidine torpens; sed magis in vita divom metus urget inanis mortalis casumque timent quem cuique ferat fors.”