Charos

Charos, written Χάρος in ancient Greek, is a figure associated with death in certain strands of Greek mythology. He is distinct from Charôn, the mythic ferryman of the dead, though both are linked to the realm of the afterlife in later interpretive traditions.

The attestation of Charos is fragmentary and inconsistent across sources. In some references he is treated as a separate personification of death, occasionally said to be a child of Nyx, the night, or as part of a broader cluster of abstract beings that personify fate, doom, or death. In other traditions, Charos is not clearly differentiated from Thanatos, the more widely recognized personification of death, and some scholars treat Charos as a literary or regional variant rather than a distinct deity. There is no evidence of a sustained cult or cultic worship specifically devoted to Charos in classical Greece.

In modern scholarship, Charos is generally regarded as a minor and poorly attested figure whose exact nature and genealogical position vary by author. Because the primary, consistently attested figure associated with death in Greek myth is Thanatos, Charos receives limited treatment and is often mentioned only in passing within discussions of Greek personifications of death and doom.

See also: Thanatos, Moros, Charon, Greek mythological personifications.