Lucian satirizes the obol in his essay "On Funerals": So thoroughly are people taken in by all of this that when one of the family dies, immediately they bring an obol and put it into his mouth to pay the ferryman for setting him over, without considering what sort of coinage is customary and current in the lower world and whether it is the Athenian or the Macedonian or the Aeginetan obol that is legal tender there, nor indeed that it would be far better not to pay the fare, since in that case the ferryman would not take them and they would be escorted to life again.[32]. In cremation urns, the coin sometimes adheres to the jawbone of the skull. In ancient Greece, it was generally reckoned as ​1⁄6 drachma (c. 0.72 grams (0.025 oz)). [116], The Republican poet Ennius locates the "treasuries of Death" across the Acheron. 10mm, 0.80 g. Horse walking right, head of roaring lion right above / ΛAΡI, the nymph Larissa walking right, balancing hydria on her raised left knee; to left, fountain head in the form of a lion’s head right, with water pouring from mouth. Coin, Caria, Halikarnassos, Obol, 150-50 BC, , Silver, SNG-Cop:367. Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney makes a less direct allusion with a simile — "words imposing on my tongue like obols" — in the "Fosterage" section of his long poem Singing School:[197], The speaker associates himself with the dead, bearing payment for Charon the ferryman, to cross the river Styx. Ancient mints took a loss producing small change in precious metal, … Ancient Coin Collecting 101. The burial yielded 37 gold tremisses dating from the late 6th and early 7th century, three unstruck coin blanks, and two small gold ingots. The popular and interesting Athenian owl tetradrachms, can be found in the Athens subcategory. Although single coins from inhumations appear most often inside or in the vicinity of the skull, they are also found in the hand or a pouch, a more logical place to carry a payment. In the newer part of the cemetery, which remained in use through the 6th century, the deposition patterns for coinage were similar, but the coins themselves were not contemporaneous with the burials, and some were pierced for wearing. They occur in the archaeological record sometimes singly, but most often in large numbers. [91] Coins of the period were adapted with Christian iconography in part to facilitate their use as an alternative to amulets of traditional religions. Some scholars have speculated that they are a form of "temple money" or votive offering,[93] but Sharon Ratke has suggested that they might represent good wishes for travelers, perhaps as a metaphor for the dead on their journey to the otherworld,[94] especially those depicting "wraiths. Once you cross the threshold, you are committed to the unswerving course that takes you to the very Regia of Orcus. [18] The 7th-century Synodus Hibernensis offers an etymological explanation: "This word ‘viaticum’ is the name of communion, that is to say, ‘the guardianship of the way,’ for it guards the soul until it shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. In the same way, violence carries off the life of young men; old men, the fullness of time. The Latin term viaticum makes sense of Charon’s obol as "sustenance for the journey," and it has been suggested that coins replaced offerings of food for the dead in Roman tradition. [30] Humor, as in Aristophanes's comic catabasis The Frogs, "makes the journey to Hades less frightening by articulating it explicitly and trivializing it." "nail, metal spit";[1] Latin: obolus) was a form of ancient Greek currency and weight. [162], The hunt is also associated with the administering of a herbal viaticum in the medieval chansons de geste, in which traditional heroic culture and Christian values interpenetrate. The phrase "Charon’s obol" as used by archaeologists sometimes can be understood as referring to a particular religious rite, but often serves as a kind of shorthand for coinage as grave goods presumed to further the deceased's passage into the afterlife. Regardless of what specific imagery was chosen, the coin types clearly referred to the issuing authority of a particular coin. The obolus, along with the mirror, was a symbol of new schismatic heretics in the short story "The Theologians" by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. Aristophanes makes jokes about the fee, and a character complains that Theseus must have introduced it, characterizing the Athenian hero in his role of city organizer as a bureaucrat.[31]. E.J. N&N Collection. or Best Offer. Snoek. [100] A Sumerian model for Charon has been proposed,[101] and the figure has possible antecedents among the Egyptians; scholars are divided as to whether these influenced the tradition of Charon, but the 1st-century BC historian Diodorus Siculus thought so and mentions the fee. "[26] In an elegy of consolation spoken in the person of the dead woman, the Augustan poet Propertius expresses the finality of death by her payment of the bronze coin to the infernal toll collector (portitor). Many if not most of these occurrences conform to the myth of Charon’s obol in neither the number of coins nor their positioning. Patina 101. The Greek word ‘obol’ originally meant ‘roasting spit’, as bundles of iron roasting spits once served as a type of currency before coins were minted. "[19] Thomas Aquinas explained the term as "a prefiguration of the fruit of God, which will be in the Promised Land. Ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Persian coins for collectors. Authenticity and Satisfaction Guaranteed. The coin for Charon is conventionally referred to in Greek literature as an obolos (Greek ὀβολός), one of the basic denominations of ancient Greek coinage, worth one-sixth of a drachma. [150], The two coins serve the plot by providing Psyche with fare for the return; allegorically, this return trip suggests the soul’s rebirth, perhaps a Platonic reincarnation or the divine form implied by the so-called Orphic gold tablets. Swedish folklore documents the custom from the 18th into the 20th century. These begin to appear in the late Iron Age and continue into the Viking Age. $299.99. 223–226; statistics offered also by Keld Grinder-Hansen, "Charon’s Fee in Ancient Greece?,", Bonnie Effros, "Grave Goods and the Ritual Expression of Identity," in, Märit Gaimster, "Scandinavian Gold Bracteates in Britain: Money and Media in the Dark Ages,", Märit Gaimster, "Scandinavian Gold Bracteates in Britain,", Gareth Williams, "The Circulation and Function of Coinage in Conversion-Period England," in, Signe Horn Fuglesang, "Viking and Medieval Amulets in Scandinavia,". The earliest known coin-hoard from antiquity was found buried in a pot within the foundations of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, dating to the mid-6th century BC. [124] In his best-known representation, on the problematic Gundestrup Cauldron, he is surrounded by animals with mythico-religious significance; taken in the context of an accompanying scene of initiation, the horned god can be interpreted as presiding over the process of metempsychosis, the cycle of death and rebirth,[125] regarded by ancient literary sources as one of the most important tenets of Celtic religion[126] and characteristic also of Pythagoreanism and the Orphic or Dionysiac mysteries. "[109], The numerous chthonic deities among the Romans were also frequently associated with wealth. On the older weight standard of Aegina, an obol weighed 1.05 grams. Sarah Kay views this substitute rite as communion with the Girardian "primitive sacred," speculating that "pagan" beliefs lurk beneath a Christian veneer. Gorgoneion Rev. [34] The jawbones of skulls found in certain burials in Roman Britain are stained greenish from contact with a copper coin; Roman coins are found later in Anglo-Saxon graves, but often pierced for wearing as a necklace or amulet. This was due to the influence and power of the city of Athens. Sea turtle with T-back shell / Small divided incuse punch. [20], An equivalent word in Greek is ephodion (ἐφόδιον); like viaticum, the word is used in antiquity to mean "provision for a journey" (literally, "something for the road," from the prefix ἐπ-, "on" + ὁδός, "road, way")[21] and later in Greek patristic literature for the Eucharist administered on the point of death.[22]. For a synopsis of Apuleius's narrative, see, Neither ancient literary sources nor archaeological finds indicate that the ritual of Charon's obol explains the modern-era custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, nor is the single coin said to have been placed under the bum. [43] Coins begin to appear with greater frequency in graves during the 3rd century BC, along with gold wreaths and plain unguentaria (small bottles for oil) in place of the earlier lekythoi. [39] A few tombs at Olynthus have contained two coins, but more often a single bronze coin was positioned in the mouth or within the head of the skeleton. Rhodes, Caria, AR Hemidrachm. The obol (Greek: ὀβολός, obolos, also ὀβελός (obelós), ὀβελλός (obellós), ὀδελός (odelós). [52] Although the placement of a coin within the skull is uncommon in Jewish antiquity and was potentially an act of idolatry, rabbinic literature preserves an allusion to Charon in a lament for the dead "tumbling aboard the ferry and having to borrow his fare." Was: £388.80. Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," p. 27; Stevens, "Charon’s Obol," pp. Her religious paraphernalia included gold tablets inscribed with instructions for the afterlife and a terracotta figure of a Bacchic worshipper. Excavations at Argos discovered several dozen of these early obols, dated well before 800 BC; they are now displayed at the Numismatic Museum of Athens. Vol. Coins started to be placed in tombs almost as soon as they came into circulation on the island in the 6th century, and some predate both the first issue of the obol and any literary reference to Charon’s fee. [158], Anglo-Saxon and early–medieval Irish missionaries took the idea of a viaticum literally, carrying the Eucharistic bread and oil with them everywhere. The placing of a coin in the mouth of the deceased is found also during Parthian and Sasanian times in what is now Iran. 216–223, for discussion and further examples. shipping: + $2.99 shipping . C $1.72 0 bids + C $10.43 shipping . Before embarking on her descent, Psyche receives instructions for navigating the underworld: The airway of Dis is there, and through the yawning gates the pathless route is revealed. [136], In the 19th century, the German scholar Georg Heinrici proposed that Greek and Roman practices pertaining to the care of the dead, specifically including Charon’s obol, shed light on vicarious baptism, or baptism for the dead, to which St. Paul refers in a letter to the Corinthians. One fragmentary text seems to refer to a single obol to be paid by each initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries to the priestess of Demeter, the symbolic value of which is perhaps to be interpreted in light of Charon’s obol as the initiate’s gaining access to knowledge required for successful passage to the afterlife. [163] In the Raoul de Cambrai, the dying Bernier receives three blades of grass in place of the corpus Domini. 5th-1st century BC. [78], Textual evidence also exists for covering portions of the deceased’s body with gold foil. Green, "God in Man’s Image: Thoughts on the Genesis and Affiliations of Some Romano-British Cult-Imagery,", For initiation and the Gundestrup Cauldron, see Kim R. McCone, ", Jonathan Williams, "Religion and Roman Coins," in, John K. Davies, "Temples, Credit, and the Circulation of Money," in, Pierre Lombard, "Jewellery and Goldware," in. [36], Some of the oldest coins from Mediterranean tombs have been found on Cyprus. [127], From its 7th-century BC beginnings in western Anatolia, ancient coinage was viewed not as distinctly secular, but as a form of communal trust bound up in the ties expressed by religion. Contrary to popular etiology there is little evidence to connect the myth of Charon to the custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, though the larger gold-foil coverings discussed above might include pieces shaped for the eyes. [96] In modern-era Greek folkloric survivals of Charon (as Charos the death demon), sea voyage and river crossing are conflated, and in one later tale, the soul is held hostage by pirates, perhaps representing the oarsmen, who require a ransom for release. Ancient Greek coins were not limited to present-day Greece. [27] Several other authors mention the fee. 25ff. But even when he’s dying, the poor man’s required to make his own way (viaticum … quaerere), and if it happens that he doesn’t have a penny (aes) at hand, nobody will give him permission to draw his last breath. [82] This practice may or may not be distinct from the funerary use of gold leaf inscribed with figures and placed on the eyes, mouths, and chests of warriors in Macedonian burials during the late Archaic period (580–460 BC); in September 2008, archaeologists working near Pella in northern Greece publicized the discovery of twenty warrior graves in which the deceased wore bronze helmets and were supplied with iron swords and knives along with these gold-leaf coverings. The presence of coins or a coin-hoard in Germanic ship-burials suggests an analogous concept.[4]. Ancient Greek SILVER COIN OBOL IONIA MILETOS 10.1mm. In his treatise On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero identifies the Roman god Dis Pater with the Greek Pluton,[110] explaining that riches are hidden in and arise from the earth. Kenney, text, translation and commentary, Susan Savage, "Remotum a Notitia Vulgari,". It has been conjectured that the coins were to pay the oarsmen who would row the ship into the next world, while the ingots were meant for the steersmen. When coins came into use, the obol was the name given to the small silver coins that were valued at one sixth of a drachma. AR Obol. Uncleaned Ancient Coins 101. And because of this it is called the viaticum, since it provides us with the way of getting there"; the idea of Christians as "travelers in search of salvation" finds early expression in the Confessions of St. Ancient Coin Prices 101 38–42; G.J.C. These metal bars were called obelos, which would later inspire the name of the Greek obol coin. [17] The earliest literary evidence of this Christian usage for viaticum appears in Paulinus’s account of the death of Saint Ambrose in 397 AD. $99.95. "These factors make it difficult to determine the rite’s significance. [58] A gold-plated coin was found in the mouth of a young man buried on the Isle of Wight in the mid-6th century; his other grave goods included vessels, a drinking horn, a knife, and gaming-counters[59] of ivory with one cobalt-blue glass piece. Franz Cumont regarded the numerous examples found in Roman tombs as "evidence of no more than a traditional rite which men performed without attaching a definite meaning to it. To me this is so richly pleasing that, the nearer I draw to death, I seem within sight of landfall, as if, at an unscheduled time, I will come into the harbor after a long voyage. 224–225; Morris, David Blackman, "Archaeology in Greece 1999–2000,", David Blackman, "Archaeology in Greece 1996–97,", K. Tasntsanoglou and George M. Parássoglou, "Two Gold, L.V. 220–221. Two obols made a diobol, weighing around 1.41-1.43 grams of silver. At Apollonia Pontica, the custom had been practiced from the mid-4th century BC; in one cemetery, for instance, 17 percent of graves contained small bronze local coins in the mouth or hand of the deceased. [192] In Stanhope’s vision, the ferryman is a calm and patriarchal figure more in keeping with the Charon of the archaic Greek lekythoi than the fearsome antagonist often found in Christian-era art and literature. [4] Plutarch states the Spartans had an iron obol of four coppers. li A silver coin or unit of weight equal to one sixth of a drachma, formerly used in ancient Greece. One of the first steps in preparing a corpse was to seal the lips, sometimes with linen or gold bands, to prevent the soul’s return. 25-38, and on administering the rite to those already dead pp. In the 3rd- to 4th-century area of the cemetery, coins were placed near the skulls or hands, sometimes protected by a pouch or vessel, or were found in the grave-fill as if tossed in. Stevens, "Charon’s Obol," pp. Walters, David M. Robinson, "The Residential Districts and the Cemeteries at Olynthos,". Greek and Latin literary sources specify the coin as an obol, and explain it as a payment or bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Charon’s Obol. All of these pseudo-coins have no sign of attachment, are too thin for normal use, and are often found in burial sites. [12] The apothecaries' system also reckoned the obol or obolus as ​1⁄48 ounce or ​1⁄2 scruple. Plutarch, Parallel Lives, The Life of Lysander, Biba Teržan "L'aristocrazia femminile nella prima età del Ferro", "The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age" by Harry Fokkens & Anthony Harding, British Museum Catalogue 11 – Attica Megaris Aegina, How we came to know about the iron obols, the antecedents of the drachma, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Obol_(coin)&oldid=993175032, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 2. Opens image gallery. [2] Heraklides of Pontus in his work on "Etymologies" mentions the obols of Heraion and derives the origin of obolos from obelos. [184] Like Charon's obol, the viaticum can serve as both sustenance for the journey[185] and seal. The next step was to use metal rods or spits (an obelos from which the obol coin derives its name) which were 1.5 meters in length and … Aegina. LARISSA Thessaly 479BC Obol Ancient Silver Greek Coin Horseman Athena i36789. An exception is the Charon and Psyche of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, exhibited ca. Coins are found in Greek burials by the 5th century BC, as soon as Greece was monetized, and appear throughout the Roman Empire into the 5th century AD, with examples conforming to the Charon’s obol type as far west as the Iberian Peninsula, north into Britain, and east to the Vistula river in Poland. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Charon's obol appears in graves in Sweden, Scania, and Norway. An Egyptian custom is indicated by a burial at Abydos, dating from the 22nd Dynasty (945–720 BC) or later, for which the deceased woman's mouth was covered with a faience uadjet, or protective eye amulet. Definition of obol : an ancient Greek coin or weight equal to ¹/₆ drachma Examples of obol in a Sentence Recent Examples on the Web Charon’s obol is a term for a coin, typically placed in the mouth of a dead … Having learned his lessons as an initiate into the mysteries, and after ritual immersion in the river Pactolus, Midas forsakes the "bogus eternity" of gold for spiritual rebirth. See ", Drachm, mid- to late-4th century BC, from, Sitta von Reden, "Money, Law and Exchange: Coinage in the Greek. Circa 510-485 BC. Bronze coins usually numbered one or two per grave, as would be expected from the custom of Charon’s obol, but one burial contained 23 bronze coins, and another held a gold solidus and a semissis. Curiously, the coin was not the danake of Persian origin, as it was sometimes among the Greeks, but usually a Greek drachma. The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, though it is also found in the ancient Near East. The seal may also serve to regulate the speech of the dead, which was sometimes sought through rituals for its prophetic powers, but also highly regulated as dangerous; mystery religions that offered arcane knowledge of the afterlife prescribed ritual silence. Ancient Greek Coin Collecting 101. The burials dated from the 4th to the late 2nd century BC. [14] Cicero, in his philosophical dialogue On Old Age (44 BC), has the interlocutor Cato the Elder combine two metaphors — nearing the end of a journey, and ripening fruit — in speaking of the approach to death: I don’t understand what greed should want for itself in old age; for can anything be sillier than to acquire more provisions (viaticum) as less of the journey remains? These paper-thin, fragile gold crosses are sometimes referred to by scholars with the German term Goldblattkreuze. These gold disks, similar to coins though generally single-sided, were influenced by late Roman imperial coins and medallions but feature iconography from Norse myth and runic inscriptions. "[182] A perhaps apocryphal story from a Cistercian chronicle circa 1200 indicates that the viaticum was regarded as an apotropaic seal against demons (ad avertendos daemonas[183]), who nevertheless induced a woman to attempt to snatch the Host (viaticum) from the mouth of Pope Urban III's corpse. [50], Discoveries of a single coin near the skull in tombs of the Levant suggest a similar practice among Phoenicians in the Persian period. In Judea, a pair of silver denarii were found in the eye sockets of a skull; the burial dated to the 2nd century A.D. occurs within a Jewish community, but the religious affiliation of the deceased is unclear. [54] In Belgic Gaul, varying deposits of coins are found with the dead for the 1st through 3rd centuries, but are most frequent in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Variety of placement and number, including but not limited to a single coin in the mouth, is characteristic of all periods and places. On the Iberian Peninsula, evidence interpreted as Charon's obol has been found at Tarragona. Larissa, Thessaly, AR obol, ca. Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," pp. In some versions of the myth, Midas's hard-won insight into the meaning of life and the limitations of earthly wealth is accompanied by conversion to the cult of Dionysus. For example, J.H.G. The tale lends itself to multiple interpretational approaches, and it has frequently been analyzed as an allegory of Platonism as well as of religious initiation, iterating on a smaller scale the plot of the Metamorphoses as a whole, which concerns the protagonist Lucius’s journey towards salvation through the cult of Isis. C $1,344.20. Ancient Greek coins are varied in their designs, and the issues of a single mint can show a wide variety of types over a long period of time. Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity." At Broadstairs in Kent, a young man had been buried with a Merovingian gold tremissis (ca. [37], Although only a small percentage of Greek burials contain coins, among these there are widespread examples of a single coin positioned in the mouth of a skull or with cremation remains. [187] Both vicarious baptism and the placement of a viaticum in the mouth of a person already dead reflect Christian responses to, rather than outright rejection of, ancient religious traditions pertaining to the cult of the dead. 575) in his mouth. Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," pp. The obol is a very small weight that originated as the weight of a tiny Greek coin. Make Offer - ATHENS Attica Greece 454BC Silver Obol Ancient Greek Coin Owl Athena NGC i59101. [35] Among the ancient Greeks, only about 5 to 10 percent of known burials contain any coins at all; in some Roman cremation cemeteries, however, as many as half the graves yield coins. [67] In Britain, the practice was just as frequent, if not more so, among Christians and persisted even to the end of the 19th century. In Roman literary sources the coin is usually bronze or copper. € 370.00. [83], In Gaul and in Alemannic territory, Christian graves of the Merovingian period reveal an analogous Christianized practice in the form of gold or gold-alloy leaf shaped like a cross,[84] imprinted with designs, and deposited possibly as votives or amulets for the deceased. In Hellenistic-era tombs at one cemetery in Athens, coins, usually bronze, were found most often in the dead person’s mouth, though sometimes in the hand, loose in the grave, or in a vessel. [8] From the 6th to the 4th centuries BC in the Black Sea region, low-value coins depicting arrowheads or dolphins were in use mainly for the purpose of "local exchange and to serve as ‘Charon’s obol.‘"[9] The payment is sometimes specified with a term for "boat fare" (in Greek naulon, ναῦλον, Latin naulum); "fee for ferrying" (porthmeion, πορθμήϊον or πορθμεῖον); or "waterway toll" (Latin portorium). His Psyche paintings were most likely based on the narrative poem of William Morris that was a retelling of the version by Apuleius. The phrase continues to be used, however, to suggest the ritual or religious significance of coinage in a funerary context. Magnification 101. ANCIENT INDO - GREEK SILVER COIN DRACHM 14,2mm. To this nasty old man you’ll give one of the two coins you carry — call it boat fare (naulum) — but in such a way that he himself should take it from your mouth with his own hand. [171], Scholars have frequently[172] suggested that the use of a viaticum in the Christian rite for the dying reflected preexisting religious practice, with Charon’s obol replaced by a more acceptably Christian sacrament. With instructions that recall those received by Psyche for her heroic descent, or the inscribed Totenpass for initiates, the Christian protagonist of a 14th-century French pilgrimage narrative is advised: This bread (pain, i.e. The Attic standard was the most widespread weight standard in the ancient greek world. [102] It might go without saying that only when coinage comes into common use is the idea of payment introduced,[103] but coins were placed in graves before the appearance of the Charon myth in literature. … Pass by in silence, without uttering a word. [115] When a Roman died, the treasury at the Temple of Venus in the sacred grove of the funeral goddess Libitina collected a coin as a "death tax". $266.99. Are these our hopes, tell me, that after the cross and death of our Master, we should place our hopes of salvation on an image of a Greek king? Silver Obol of Athens, dated 515–510 BC. [138], The placement of the coin on the mouth can be compared to practices pertaining to the disposition of the dead in the Near East. Dost thou not know what great result the cross has achieved? The history of ancient Greek coinage can be divided (along with most other Greek art forms) into four periods: the Archaic, the Classical, the Hellenistic and the Roman.The Archaic period extends from the introduction of coinage to the Greek world during the 7th century BC until the Persian Wars in about 480 BC. This neat division, however, has been shown to be misleading. Coin, Caria, Obol, 5th Century BC, Uncertain Mint, , Silver. Bahraini excavations at the necropolis of Al-Hajjar produced examples of these coverings in gold leaf, one of which retained labial imprints.[140]. "[133], Attempts to explain the symbolism of the rite also must negotiate the illogical placement of the coin in the mouth. Dewing 1672. 2 photo. [86], The crosses are characteristic of Lombardic Italy[87] (Cisalpine Gaul of the Roman imperial era), where they were fastened to veils and placed over the deceased's mouth in a continuation of Byzantine practice. The first silver obols were minted in Aegina, most likely sometime after 600 BCE. Obol coins are usually lighter than the theoretical weight. The deceased were buried with an obol placed in the mouth of the corpse, so that—once a deceased's shade reached Hades—they would be able to pay Charon for passage across the river Acheron or Styx. [60], Scandinavian and Germanic gold bracteates found in burials of the 5th and 6th centuries, particularly those in Britain, have also been interpreted in light of Charon’s obol. [139] Oval mouth coverings, perforated for fastening, are found in burials throughout the Near East from the 1st century BC through the 1st century AD, providing evidence of an analogous practice for sealing the mouths of the dead in regions not under Roman Imperial control. Facing Male Heads/ Sea Eagle. [38] At Olynthus, 136 coins (mostly bronze, but some silver), were found with burials; in 1932, archaeologists reported that 20 graves had each contained four bronze coins, which they believed were intended for placement in the mouth. [47], Charon's obol is usually regarded as Hellenic, and a single coin in burials is often taken as a mark of Hellenization,[48] but the practice may be independent of Greek influence in some regions. Text: Image: Text: Image: SNG Del 1512: Aegina, 525-500 BC. The myth of Charon has rarely been interpreted in light of mystery religions, despite the association in Apuleius and archaeological evidence of burials that incorporate both Charon’s obol and cultic paraphernalia. [173] Because of the viaticum’s presumed pre-Christian origin, an anti-Catholic historian of religion at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries propagandized the practice, stating that "it was from the heathens [that] the papists borrowed it. These are impressions of an actual coin or numismatic icon struck into a small piece of gold foil. [129], Erwin Rohde argued, on the basis of later folk customs, that the obol was originally a payment to the dead person himself, as a way of compensating him for the loss of property that passed to the living, or as a token substitute for the more ancient practice of consigning his property to the grave with him. 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