„Obolul lui Charon” în Dobrogea

Abstract

Charon’s Mite in Dobrudja

When archaeologists research ancient necropolises they often happen to find one or more coins in the funerary inventories. It is obvious for experienced researchers that the coin put into the tombs represents the mite given to the dead’s soul in order to pay Charon, the ferryman, for Crossing the Styx towards Hades. That is why the coin is called “Charon’s mite” or “naulus” (as the Latins called it). This practice, which consists in placing coins inside the burial or incineration tombs, is a topic which preoccupied only few Romanian scholars (such as: D. Protase, G. Mănucu-Adameşteanu, D. V. Rosetti, etc.). Their studies were not directed towards the establishment of the position of Charon, the boatman, in the Greek mythology, they only brought about explanations over ritual aspects. That is why we thought it useful to present in the first chapter of this approach an introduction to ancient beliefs referring to the world to come, and then to explore the beginning and evolution of Charon’s myth in Greek, Roman, and Etruscan mythologies. Analysing the literary, epigraphic, iconographic and last but not least archaeological sources, we could notice with a certain probability that the mythological character named Charon appeared at the beginning of the Greek classical epoch on the ancient territory of Boetia. Through the theatre, Charon’s myth grew in the Greeks' conscience as an old grey-haired boatman poorly dressed, who, for a mite-or more would convey the dead people’s soul over the Infemo’s stream to “the world beyond”. In Etruscan mythology, Charon was adopted in the 6th c.B.C., as a personification of death, being presented as a violent rather than a good-willed character. In the second chapter, which deals with the presence of this ritual in the Dobrudjan area, we have undertaken a description of this custom as met in the other provinces of the Roman Empire. We could notice such examples in Hispania, Gallia, Italy, Pannonia, Dalmaţia, Achaia, Moesia, i.e. in the entire Roman Empire. The third chapter contains a  analysis of the presence of the “Charon’s mite” ritual in the tombs in the Dobrudja area starting from the Greek classical epoch to our time. In the space between the Danube and the Pontus Euxinus, “Charon’s mite” appears in the Greeks’ tombs ever since the classical epoch, and during the Greek era, the discoveries of the “funerary mite” become more numerous. The Roman conquest of Dobrudja favoured a wide spreading of this funeral practice both in rural and urban zones. After the “Christianisation” of death, the custom of placing coins in tombs diminished, but it survived in isolated cases, such as in Beroe, Tomis and Callatis. During the 7th-9th c.A.D. this ritual was met only in Istria-“Capul Viilor”, but the function of the coin found here is still unclear. In the mediaeval cemeteries (Isaccea, Nufăru, Enisala, etc.), a revival of the custom of placing coins in the Christian tombs was ascertained, probably owing to an influence that came from the south-west of the Dobrudjan territory. Through the Christian Church the acceptance of this ritual was modified so that the coin should be put in the tombs in order to pay at “Heaven’s frontiers” and not to pay Charon, the boatman. With this change, the-ritual called “Charon's mite” has survived until the present day, being acknowledged by ethnologists as the practice of placing a coin in the dead-person’s hand, or throwing several coins next to or on the dead’s body while it was being covered with earth.