Virgil's Aeneid: Charon

Here the enormous whirlpool gapes aswirl with filth, seethes and spews out all its silt in the Wailing River. 340 And here the dreaded ferryman guards the flood, grisly in his squalor—Charon… his scraggly beard a tangled mat of white, his eyes fixed in a fiery stare, and his grimy rags hang down from his shoulders by a knot. But all on his own he punts his craft with a pole and hoists sail as he ferries the dead souls in his rust-red skiff. He’s on in years, but a god’s old age is hale and green.

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