In Dante’s Inferno, Charon ferries souls across the river Acheron at the entrance to Hell.
Acheron is one of the rivers associated with the classical Greek Underworld and is often described as the river of woe. Dante adapts this mythology in Inferno, where newly dead souls gather on its bank and wait for Charon to transport them across into Hell.
Charon appears in Canto III as an aged, fierce boatman with fiery eyes. He recognizes Dante as living and initially objects to carrying him, but Virgil explains that Dante’s journey is divinely authorized. The crossing marks the travelers’ passage from the human world into the realm of eternal punishment.
The river is easy to confuse with the Styx, Cocytus, or Phlegethon because all are part of classical and medieval Underworld traditions. In some later Roman accounts, Charon is associated with the Styx, but Dante specifically places his ferry on the Acheron. In the poem, Acheron forms Hell’s boundary, while the other rivers appear in different infernal settings.