"Am I the first person to have thought of this?" "No."

[thanate]

So... Charon used to take a toll of a coin (or sometimes two, one from each eye) from every soul that died and passed into the underworld. (well, Virgil says if you weren't buried-- ie, didn't have the coin-- you got a free ride if you waited around a hundred years for it)

What happened to all that money?

I mean, ferrying the dead is pretty much a 24-7 sort of job, so it's not as if he could go on a spending spree. In fact, there's no particular indication I've heard that he ever left the boat, and it was certainly not overflowing in riches. All but the earliest descriptions seem to imply it's close to falling apart, in fact, so he wasn't spending it on repairs, either. Does Pluto (whose name literally implies wealth, being the god of things under the earth including gems & metals to be mined) come by occasionally and collect the takings to melt down into new ores? Or is there a huge fortune buried in the mud at the bottom of the Styx and the other various rivers the dead have been ferried over?

Comments

[fishy1.livejournal.com]

Mort or Reaper Man, i believe. (the Pratchett)

Will have to do some looking for the other story. Possibly Norse?

[saladmonkeylamb.livejournal.com]

I think that was "Soul Music" where he quit suddenly and his granddaughter had to take over?

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Reaper Man. That's the one where he gets replaced by a non-anthropomorphic force, and lots of people stop dying.