The River Styx
Styx, in Greek mythology, a river, the entrance to the
underworld. It was often described as the boundary river
over which the aged ferryman Charon transported the
shades of the dead. Charon is considered the son of Night
and of Erebus, who personified the darkness under the earth
through which dead souls passed to reach the home of Hades,
the god of death. He would admit to his boat only the souls
of those who had received the rites of burial and whose passage
had been paid with a coin placed under the tongue of the corpse.
Those who had not been buried and whom Charon would not admit to
his boat were doomed to wait beside the Styx for 100 years. The
river was personified as a daughter of the Titan Oceanus, and Styx
was the guardian of the sacred oaths that bound the gods.
The actual river, the modern name of which is the
Mavronéri, is in northeastern Arcadia, Greece. It
plunges over a 183-m (600-ft) cliff, then flows through
a wild gorge. The ancient Greeks believed that its
waters were poisonous, and the river was associated with
the underworld from the time of Homer.
Charon
In art Charon was represented as a morose and grisly old man. In Etruscan he was known
as Charun and appeared as a death demon, armed with a hammer.
Eventually he came to be regarded as the image of death and of the
world below. As such he survives in Charos, or Charontas, the angel of
death in modern Greek folklore.