It is a well-known fact, though one not easy to explain, that Charon, under the form Charuns, figures as the messenger of death in several of the mural paintings of Etruscan tombs. He is there depicted as a hideous monster, with hooked nose, sometimes winged, wielding an axe, and entwined with serpents. That the mild and quiet Charon of the Greeks should have his counterpart in a fierce and deformed daemon in the more monstrous pantheon of Etruria is quite natural; but it is less clear whence the Greeks and Etruscans originally borrowed their respective divinities. We must, however, resume our description of the picture of Polygnotus. About the entrance of Hades cluster the transgressors whose punishment is eternal. They are very few in number: the parricide, the temple-robber, and such noted personages of legend as Tityus, who is devoured by a vulture after the fashion of Prometheus. Next we reach a group of fair women, who must indeed have been delightful creations under the hands of the most dignified and majestic of all painters--Ariadne and Tyro, Procris and Chloris. For some who had to be punished a most gentle meed of punishment is provided. Phaedra in her lifetime, as is well known, was inspired with a disastrous passion for her stepson Hippolytus, and after his death she went and hanged herself. In the painting of Polygnotus, as Pausanias observes, ‘Phaedra is borne through the air on a swing, and holds the ropes on each side in her hands: this attitude, in spite of the extreme gentleness of the allusion, refers to the manner of her death.’ Near the group of women Theseus and Peirithous are seated. They had dared, with overweening impiety, to make their way into Hades, in order to carry off Persephone, Queen of the Shades. But they were made prisoners by the nether powers and kept in chains. Such a fate for heroes of the race of the gods naturally seemed to Polygnotus too harsh. In his picture they merely keep their seats. So Virgil writes, ‘Sedet aeternumque sedebit infelix Theseus.’ Pausanias quotes Panyasis, a late Epic poet, to the effect that Theseus and Peirithous on their seats did not appear to be prisoners, but really the rock grew to their flesh in the place of bonds. But Polygnotus was content with a mere hint: in his painting nothing indicated either bondage or torture. Near by are Cameiro and Clytie, daughters of Pandareus. In the _Odyssey_ Penelope tells how they were carried away by the fierce storm-winds and given to the hateful Erinnyes. But Polygnotus will know nothing of the Erinnyes. He merely represents the girls as crowned with flowers and playing with astragali or knuckle-bones. The storm-winds seem to have done them little harm.