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Attic red-figure lekythos attributed to the Tymbos painter showing Charon welcoming a soul into his boat, c. 500–450 BC. In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (/ ˈ k ɛər ɒ n,-ən / KAIR-on, -ən; Ancient Greek: Χάρων Ancient Greek pronunciation: [kʰá.rɔːn]) is a psychopomp, the ferryman of the Greek underworld.
In Greek mythology, the underworld or Hades (Ancient Greek: ᾍδης, romanized: Háidēs) is a distinct realm (one of the three realms that make up the cosmos) where an individual goes after death. The earliest idea of afterlife in Greek myth is that, at the moment of death, an individual's essence ( psyche ) is separated from the corpse and ...
The mythology or religion of most cultures incorporate a god of death or, more frequently, a divine being closely associated with death, an afterlife, or an underworld. They are often amongst the most powerful and important entities in a given tradition, reflecting the fact that death, like birth , is central to the human experience.
While the Greek gods are immortal and unaffected by aging, the mortality of humans forces them to move through the stages of life, before reaching death. [2] The group of figures referred to as "heroes" (or "demigods"), unique to Greek religion and mythology, are (after the time of Homer) individuals who have died but continue to exert power in ...
In Greek mythology, Hades, the god of the Greek underworld, was the first-born son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. He had three older sisters, Hestia , Demeter , and Hera , as well as a younger brother, Poseidon , all of whom had been swallowed whole by their father as soon as they were born.
Following Greek mythology, Charon ferries souls across the Acheron to Hell. Those who were neutral in life sit on the banks. He claimed that Acheron flowed in the opposite direction from Oceanus beneath the earth under desert places. The word is also occasionally used as a synecdoche for Hades itself.
While according to Greek mythology the realm of Hades is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When Cronus came to power as the King of the Titans , he imprisoned the three ancient one-eyed Cyclopes and only the hundred-armed Hecatonchires in Tartarus and set the monster Campe as its guard.
The Greek writer Lucian (ca. 125–after 180 AD) suggests that Pluto's love for his wife gave the ruler of the underworld a special sympathy or insight into lovers parted by death. [54] In one of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead , Pluto questions Protesilaus , the first Greek hero killed in the Trojan War , who wishes to return to the world of ...