it then he who first discovered the figure’s mystic value? Or did he merely adopt and interpret in his own way a symbol which for long ages before him had been endowed with magical powers? Was it perhaps this figure, graven on some broken potsherd, which long before coinage supplied a more ready charm protected the corpse from possession by evil spirits, or rather, in those days, from reanimation by the soul? Who shall say? The belief, which has found its modern expression in the engraving of Christian or Mohammedan texts on prophylactic coins or pottery and in barring with them the door of the lips which gives access to the corpse, is certainly primitive enough in character to date from the dimmest prehistoric age. If my suggestion as to the origin of the custom is correct, it was only the accident of a coin being commonly used as the prophylactic charm, which caused the classical association of the custom with Charon; and, once disembarrassed of this association, the popular conception of Charon in antiquity is more easily studied. The literary presentation of him in the guise of a ferryman only is a comparatively late development. The early poets know nothing of him whatever in any character. The first literary reference to him was apparently in the _Minyad_, an epic poem of doubtful but not early date, of which two lines referring to the descent of Theseus and Pirithous to the lower world ran thus: ‘There verily the ship whereon the dead embark, even that which the aged Charon as ferryman doth guide, they found not at its anchorage[233].’ These are the lines by which Pausanias believed that Polygnotus had been guided when painting the figure of Charon in his famous representation of the nether world at Delphi. Thenceforth this was the one orthodox presentation of Charon in both literature and art. Euripides and Aristophanes in numerous passages[234] both alike conform to it, and the painters of funeral vases were equally faithful.