of Charon's obol as a living allusion. In "Don Juan aux enfers" ("Don Juan in Hell"), the French Symboliste poet Charles Baudelaire marks the eponymous hero's entry to the underworld with his payment of the obol to Charon. A. E. Housman speaks of a man "Crossing alone the nighted ferry / With the one coin for fee," to "the just city / And free land of the grave." 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: See also Hell money References Further reading Death in Greek mythology Death customs Archaeology of death Roman mythology Ancient Greek religion Ancient Roman religion Gallo-Roman religion Mythological objects Obol Payments