The Lost Coin: Hours of the Cross

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Round Shield Designs (vikingage.org): "simple cross": Bayeux Tapestry, "flared cross" Arras, BM MS 559 (435), vol. 1 (c. 1000–1050).

Stevens, "Charon’s Obol," p. 226; G.J.C. Snoek, Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist: A Process of Mutual Interaction (Leiden 1995), p. 103, with documentation in note 8; Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (Yale University Press, 1997), sources given p. 218, note 20; in Christian graves of 4th-century Gaul, Bonnie Effros, Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul (Macmillan, 2002), p. 82; on the difficulty of distinguishing Christian from traditional burials in 4th-century Gaul, Mark J. Johnson, "Pagan-Christian Burial Practices of the Fourth Century: Shared Tombs?" Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997) 37–59.

The coinages of Alexander III to Robert I (1249-1329)

These examples of the "Charon's piece" resemble in material and size the tiny inscribed tablet or funerary amulet called a lamella (Latin for a metal-foil sheet) or a Totenpass, a "passport for the dead" with instructions on navigating the afterlife, conventionally regarded as a form of Orphic or Dionysiac devotional. [75] Several of these prayer sheets have been found in positions that indicate placement in or on the deceased's mouth. A functional equivalence with the Charon's piece is further suggested by the evidence of flattened coins used as mouth coverings ( epistomia) from graves in Crete. [76] A gold phylactery with a damaged inscription invoking the syncretic god Sarapis was found within the skull in a burial from the late 1st century AD in southern Rome. The gold tablet may have served both as a protective amulet during the deceased's lifetime and then, with its insertion into the mouth, possibly on the model of Charon's obol, as a Totenpass. [77] Gold-leaf oval stamped with female head, from a Roman-era burial in Douris, Lebanon ( Deutsches Archäologisches Institut)

I don’t understand what greed should want for itself in old age; for can anything be sillier than to acquire more provisions ( viaticum) as less of the journey remains? [15] … Fruits, if they are green, can scarcely be wrenched off the trees; if they are ripe and softened, they fall. In the same way, violence carries off the life of young men; old men, the fullness of time. To me this is so richly pleasing that, the nearer I draw to death, I seem within sight of landfall, as if, at an unscheduled time, I will come into the harbor after a long voyage. [16] Kay's conjecture that a pre-Christian tradition accounts for the use of leaves as the viaticum is supported by evidence from Hellenistic magico-religious practice, the continuance of which is documented in Gaul and among Germanic peoples. [168] Spells from the Greek Magical Papyri often require the insertion of a leaf — an actual leaf, a papyrus scrap, the representation of a leaf in metal foil, or an inscribed rectangular lamella (as described above) — into the mouth of a corpse or skull, as a means of conveying messages to and from the realms of the living and the dead. In one spell attributed to Pitys the Thessalian, the practitioner is instructed to inscribe a flax leaf with magic words and to insert it into the mouth of a dead person. [169] Although only a small percentage of Greek burials contain coins, among these there are widespread examples of a single coin positioned in the mouth of a skull or with cremation remains. In cremation urns, the coin sometimes adheres to the jawbone of the skull. [38] At Olynthus, 136 coins (mostly bronze, but some silver), were found with burials; in 1932, archaeologists reported that 20 graves had each contained four bronze coins, which they believed were intended for placement in the mouth. [39] A few tombs at Olynthus have contained two coins, but more often a single bronze coin was positioned in the mouth or within the head of the skeleton. In Hellenistic-era tombs at one cemetery in Athens, coins, usually bronze, were found most often in the dead person's mouth, though sometimes in the hand, loose in the grave, or in a vessel. [40] At Chania, an originally Minoan settlement on Crete, a tomb dating from the second half of the 3rd century BC held a rich variety of grave goods, including fine gold jewelry, a gold tray with the image of a bird, a clay vessel, a bronze mirror, a bronze strigil, and a bronze "Charon coin" depicting Zeus. [41] In excavations of 91 tombs at a cemetery in Amphipolis during the mid- to late 1990s, a majority of the dead were found to have a coin in the mouth. The burials dated from the 4th to the late 2nd century BC. [42] The Nordic cross is an 18th-century innovation derived from cross flags adapted as swallow-tailed (or triple-tailed) pennons

Scottish coins on the PAS database

David A. Hinton, Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions and People in Medieval Britain (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 32–33.

Entry on viaticum, Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982, 1985 printing), p. 2054; Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1879, 1987 printing), p. 1984. Craig A. Evans, "Excavating Caiaphas, Pilate, and Simon of Cyrene: Assessing the Literary and Archaeological Evidence" in Jesus and Archaeology (Eerdmans Publishing, 2006), p. 329 online, especially note 13; Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 156 online, especially note 97 and its interpretational caveat. The airway of Dis is there, and through the yawning gates the pathless route is revealed. Once you cross the threshold, you are committed to the unswerving course that takes you to the very Regia of Orcus. But you shouldn’t go emptyhanded through the shadows past this point, but rather carry cakes of honeyed barley in both hands, [147] and transport two coins in your mouth. … Pass by in silence, without uttering a word. Without further delay you’ll come to the river of the dead, where Prefect Charon demands the toll ( portorium) up front before he’ll ferry transients in his stitched boat [148] to the distant shore. So you see, even among the dead greed lives, [149] and Charon, that collection agent of Dis, is not the kind of god who does anything without a tip. But even when he’s dying, the poor man’s required to make his own way ( viaticum … quaerere), and if it happens that he doesn’t have a penny ( aes) at hand, nobody will give him permission to draw his last breath. To this nasty old man you’ll give one of the two coins you carry — call it boat fare ( naulum) — but in such a way that he himself should take it from your mouth with his own hand. [150]

Important Notice

Because of the diversity of religious beliefs in the Greco-Roman world, and because the mystery religions that were most concerned with the afterlife and soteriology placed a high value on secrecy and arcane knowledge, no single theology [105] has been reconstructed that would account for Charon's obol. Franz Cumont regarded the numerous examples found in Roman tombs as "evidence of no more than a traditional rite which men performed without attaching a definite meaning to it." [106] The use of a coin for the rite seems to depend not just on the myth of Charon, but also on other religious and mythic traditions associating wealth and the underworld. [107] Death and wealth [ edit ] Dionysus and Ploutos ("Wealth") with the horn of abundance, 4th century BC The Christian cross emblem ( Latin cross or Greek cross) was used from the 5th century, deriving from a T-shape representing the gibbet ( stauros, crux) of the crucifixion of Jesus in use from at least the 2nd century. The globus cruciger and the staurogram is used in Byzantine coins and seals during the Heraclian period (6th century). Under the Heraclian dynasty (7th century), coins also depict simply crosses potent, patty, or pommy. Several national flags are based on late medieval war flags, including the white-on-red crosses of the flag of Denmark and the flag of Switzerland. The elongated Nordic cross originates in the 18th century due to the rectangular shape of maritime flags. and azure a cross or, four lions rampant or of Baudouin Dakeney. In addition, the Glover Roll has semy of crosses crosslet as a tincture in several coats of arms. [4] In the coat of Tillie in Cornwall. [21] The symbol is also called a "barbed cross" or an "arrow cross". An arrow cross in green was also the symbol of the Arrow Cross Party of Hungary.

Cicero, De senectute 19.71: et quasi poma ex arboribus, cruda si sunt, vix evelluntur, si matura et cocta, decidunt, sic vitam adulescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas; quae quidem mihi tam iucunda est, ut, quo propius ad mortem accedam, quasi terram videre videar aliquandoque in portum ex longa navigatione esse venturus. Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney makes a less direct allusion with a simile — "words imposing on my tongue like obols" — in the "Fosterage" section of his long poem Singing School: [194] Cross symbols used in heraldry Collection of heraldic cross variants from Hugo Gerard Ströhl's Heraldischer Atlas This set was issued in brilliant uncirculated, silver proof, silver proof piedfort as well as gold proof. Design Of The 2006 VC Medal 50p Coin Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1843, 1985 printing), entry on ἐφοδεία, pp. 745–746.

The coinage of David II to Robert III (1329-1406)

Cedric G. Boulter, "Graves in Lenormant Street, Athens," Hesperia 32 (1963), pp. 115 and 126, with other examp With instructions that recall those received by Psyche for her heroic descent, or the inscribed Totenpass for initiates, the Christian protagonist of a 14th-century French pilgrimage narrative is advised: The numerous chthonic deities among the Romans were also frequently associated with wealth. In his treatise On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero identifies the Roman god Dis Pater with the Greek Pluton, [110] explaining that riches are hidden in and arise from the earth. [111] Dis Pater is sometimes regarded as a chthonic Saturn, ruler of the Golden Age, whose consort Ops was a goddess of abundance. [112] The obscure goddess Angerona, whose iconography depicted silence and secrecy, [113] and whose festival followed that of Ops, seems to have regulated communications between the realm of the living and the underworld; [114] she may have been a guardian of both arcane knowledge and stored, secret wealth. [115] When a Roman died, the treasury at the Temple of Venus in the sacred grove of the funeral goddess Libitina collected a coin as a "death tax". [116]