To reach the Underworld, the shadows of the dead had to cross the river Acheron on the boat of Charon. The relatives placed a coin (obolus) in the mouth of the dead person, with which he or she paid for the passage across the river. The ancient satirist Lucian, in his “Dialogues of the Dead”, presents Menippus rejecting Charon’s demands for his money with the argument that he could no offer what he did not possess. The wealthy residents of Ambracia, though, had much more than a single obolus. They carried gold danakes with a winged Pegasus (symbol of Corinth, mother city of Ambracia), or a caduceus, the staff carried by god Hermes, who guided the dead to the Underworld.