↑ Neither ancient literary sources nor archaeological finds indicate that the ritual of Charon's obol explains the modern-era custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, nor is the single coin said to have been placed specifically sub lingua. See "Coins on the eyes?".
↑ Gregory Grabka, "Christian Viaticum: A Study of Its Cultural Background," Traditio 9 (1953), 1–43, especially p. 8; Susan T. Stevens, "Charon’s Obol and Other Coins in Ancient Funerary Practice," Phoenix 45 (1991) 215–229.
↑ Ian Morris, Death-ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 106, noting in his skeptical discussion of "Who Pays the Ferryman?" that "coins may have paid the ferryman, but that is not all that they did." See also Keld Grinder-Hansen, "Charon’s Fee in Ancient Greece?" Acta Hyperborea 3 (1991), p. 215, who goes so far as to assert that "there is very little evidence in favour of a connection between the Charon myth and the death-coin practice," but the point is primarily that the term "Charon’s obol" belongs to the discourse of myth and literature rather than the discipline of archaeology.
