However, we are at present concerned only with one aspect of Orphism--its lore as to the world of spirits. It is believed that this lore gradually works its way into current literature and art. After we leave the Homeric age, the next important landmark in the history of Hades is to be found in the great painting of Polygnotus in the Leschè or arcade of Delphi. Of this picture we possess so careful and detailed a description from the pen of Pausanias[33] that a skilled archaeologist, Professor Robert, has succeeded, with the help of certain vase-paintings of Polygnotan style, in restoring, figure for figure, the whole composition, with a sureness of hand which may well surprise those who do not realize the degree in which the scientific methods of archaeology have been developed in recent years. In the upper part of the picture is a group which is almost a transcript from the _Odyssey_: Odysseus sword in hand over his trench, the unburied Elpenor behind him in sailor’s dress, and Teiresias and Anticleia approaching to hold converse with him. But this group seems somewhat apart from the rest of the scene, which is composed of elements mostly foreign to the Homeric circle of ideas. On the left is the river Acheron, full of reeds and peopled with shadowy fish; on which floats the bark of the ferryman Charon, who is taking to their last home the spirits of a man and a girl. Pausanias observes that Polygnotus has borrowed Charon from the epic poem called the _Minyas_, in which the voyage to Hades of Theseus and Peirithous was narrated. Whencesoever Charon may have originally come, he certainly held a great place in the beliefs of the later Greeks. The obol, his fee, was sometimes placed in the mouth of the dead. In later writers, such as Virgil and Lucian, he is very prominent. Some of the sepulchral lekythi, of which I have spoken already, furnish us with a representation of the River of Death and the boat of Charon. One here [Illustration: FIG. 12. THE BOAT OF CHARON.] copied (Fig. 12) from a vase at Athens[34], presents a most curious scene. Charon, a being of traditional ugliness, clad in sailor’s cap and short chiton, drives his boat to the bank by means of a pole. He is awaited by a girl who bears in her hands her favourite bird, a goose, while a box for the toilet rests on a rock, and near it sits a young child. This flitting to the world of shades has quite a domestic aspect: it seems that Charon was expected to convey not only passengers, but also as baggage the offerings brought to them at the tomb. Sometimes the boat of Charon appears in these vase-paintings in close proximity to the stele of the grave; and the dead wait for him on the steps of the stele[35]. On another vase, Hermes, with herald’s staff, leads the soul down to the edge of the river[36].