Much that may have been the invention of poets for the filling up or furnishing of the desert region so stamped itself upon the general mind that it almost seemed the natural growth of authentic popular belief. Everyone was familiar with the guardian of the gate of Plouton, the malignant hound of Hades who admits everyone but lets no one out again. He is the same creature, long known from the adventure of Herakles, which is already named Kerberos by Hesiod.[6\7] Like the gate and the gate-keeper, the waters that divide Erebos from the world of the living are already known to Homer. Now they have a Ferryman added to them, the churlish old man Charon, who, like a second Kerberos, safely transports everyone across the water, but lets no one return.[7\7] The _Minyas_ is the first to mention him: that he became a real figure of popular belief (as he is still in Greece to this day, though with altered significance is shown by pictures on the Attic vases that were put into the graves with the dead. These represent the soul as it stands upon the sedgy bank and meets the ferryman who will carry it over to the other side whence no man returns.[8\7] The custom of burying the dead with a small coin fixed between the teeth was also explained as provision for the passage-money that would have to be paid to Charon.[9\7] {238} § 2 The soul, then, being safely arrived on the other bank and Kerberos passed by--what awaited it there? Those who had been initiated into the mysteries now counted upon enjoying the glad future that their hopes had formerly pictured. In reality this blessed future, vouchsafed by the grace of the deities who rule below, was not very hard to obtain. So many were initiated and recommended to divine favour that the picture of Hades, once so gloomy, began to assume a more genial aspect. Quite early we meet with the general name of "Blessedness" as applied to the future life; while the dead without much distinction are called the "Blessed".[10\7]