In Roman and Greek mythology, who was Charon?

In Greek and Roman mythology, Charon or Kharon is a psychopomp, the ferryman of Hades, who carries souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx that divides the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, is sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who cannot pay the fee, or those whose bodies are left unburied, have to wander the shores for one hundred years, until they are allowed to cross the river.

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. On later vases, Charon is given a more "kindly and refined" demeanor.

This is how the Roman poet Virgil describes Charon, manning his rust-colored skiff,

"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".

Other Latin authors describe Charon, as an old man clad in foul garb, with haggard cheeks and an unkempt beard, a fierce ferryman who guides his craft with a long pole.