Читать книгу Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals онлайн

134 страница из 204

About Charos the peasants will always, according to my experience, converse freely. Neither superstitious awe nor fear of ridicule imposes any restraint. They feel perhaps that the existence of Charos is one of the stern facts which men must face; and even the more educated classes retain sometimes, I think, an instinctive fear of making light of his name, lest he should assert his reality. For Charos is Death. He is not now, what classical literature would have him to be, merely the ferryman of the Styx. He is the god of death and of the lower world.

Hades is no longer a person but a place, the realm over which Charos rules. But the change which has befallen the old monarch’s name is the only change in the Greek conception of that realm. It is still called ‘the lower world’ (ὁ κάτω κόσμος or ἡ κάτω γῆ), and even the name Tartarus (now τὰ Τάρταρα, with the addition frequently of τῆς γῆς) still may be heard. Nor is the character of the place altered. Its epithet ‘icy-cold,’ κρυοπαγωμένος, is well-nigh as constant in modern folk-songs as was the equivalent κρυερός in Homer’s allusions to Hades’ house, while the picturesque word ἀραχνιασμένος, ‘thick with spiders’-webs,’ repeats in thought the Homeric εὐρωείς, ‘mouldering.’ Such is Charos’ kingdom, and hither he conveys men’s souls which he has snatched away from earth.