<P> The name Charon is most often explained as a proper noun from χάρων (charon), a poetic form of χαρωπός (charopós), "of keen gaze", referring either to fierce, flashing, or feverish eyes, or to eyes of a bluish - gray color . The word may be a euphemism for death . Flashing eyes may indicate the anger or irascibility of Charon as he is often characterized in literature, but the etymology is not certain . The ancient historian Diodorus Siculus thought that the ferryman and his name had been imported from Egypt . </P> <P> Charon is depicted frequently in the art of ancient Greece . Attic funerary vases of the 5th and 4th centuries BC are often decorated with scenes of the dead boarding Charon's boat . On the earlier such vases, he looks like a rough, unkempt Athenian seaman dressed in reddish - brown, holding his ferryman's pole in his right hand and using his left hand to receive the deceased . Hermes sometimes stands by in his role as psychopomp . On later vases, Charon is given a more "kindly and refined" demeanor . </P> <P> In the 1st century BC, the Roman poet Virgil describes Charon, manning his rust - colored skiff, in the course of Aeneas's descent to the underworld (Aeneid, Book 6), after the Cumaean Sibyl has directed the hero to the golden bough that will allow him to return to the world of the living: </P> <P> There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast--A sordid god: down from his hairy chin A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean; His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire . </P>

Name of the boat that crosses the river styx