Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. Greek and Latin literary sources specify the coin as an obol, and explain it as a payment or bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity."

The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, though it is also found in the ancient Near East. In Western Europe, a similar usage of coins in burials occurs in regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures, and among the Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century.

Although archaeology shows that the myth reflects an actual custom, the placement of coins with the dead was neither pervasive nor confined to a single coin in the deceased's mouth. In many burials, inscribed metal-leaf tablets or exonumia take the place of the coin, or gold-foil crosses during the early Christian period. The presence of coins or a coin-hoard in Germanic ship-burials suggests an analogous concept.

The phrase "Charon's obol" as used by archaeologists sometimes can be understood as referring to a particular religious rite, but often serves as a kind of shorthand for coinage as grave goods presumed to further the deceased's passage into the afterlife. In Latin, Charon's obol sometimes is called a viaticum, or "sustenance for the journey"; the placement of the coin on the mouth has been explained also as a seal to protect the deceased's soul or to prevent it from returning.

Terminology

The coin for Charon is conventionally referred to in Greek literature as an obolos (Greek ὀβολός), one of the basic denominations of ancient Greek coinage, worth one-sixth of a drachma. Among the Greeks, coins in actual burials are sometimes also a danakē (δανάκη) or other relatively small-denomination gold, silver, bronze or copper coin in local use. In Roman literary sources the coin is usually bronze or copper. From the 6th to the 4th centuries BC in the Black Sea region, low-value coins depicting arrowheads or dolphins were in use mainly for the purpose of "local exchange and to serve as ‘Charon's obol.‘" The payment is sometimes specified with a term for "boat fare" (in Greek naulon, ναῦλον, Latin naulum); "fee for ferrying" (porthmeion, πορθμήϊον or πορθμεῖον); or "waterway toll" (Latin portorium).

The word naulon (ναῦλον) is defined by the Christian-era lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria as the coin put into the mouth of the dead; one of the meanings of danakē (δανάκη) is given as "the obol for the dead". The Suda defines danakē as a coin traditionally buried with the dead for paying the ferryman to cross the river Acheron, and explicates the definition of porthmēïon (πορθμήϊον) as a ferryman's fee with a quotation from the poet Callimachus, who notes the custom of carrying the porthmēïon in the "parched mouths of the dead."

Charon's obol as viaticum

In Latin, Charon's obol is sometimes called a viaticum, which in everyday usage means "provision for a journey" (from via, "way, road, journey"), encompassing food, money and other supplies. The same word can refer to the living allowance granted to those stripped of their property and condemned to exile, and by metaphorical extension to preparing for death at the end of life's journey. Cicero, in his philosophical dialogue On Old Age (44 BC), has the interlocutor Cato the Elder combine two metaphors — nearing the end of a journey, and ripening fruit — in speaking of the approach to death:

Drawing on this metaphorical sense of "provision for the journey into death," ecclesiastical Latin borrowed the term viaticum for the form of Eucharist that is placed in the mouth of a person who is dying as provision for the soul's passage to eternal life. The earliest literary evidence of this Christian usage for viaticum appears in Paulinus's account of the death of Saint Ambrose in 397 AD. The 7th-century Synodus Hibernensis offers an etymological explanation: "This word ‘viaticum’ is the name of communion, that is to say, ‘the guardianship of the way,’ for it guards the soul until it shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ." Thomas Aquinas explained the term as "a prefiguration of the fruit of God, which will be in the Promised Land. And because of this it is called the viaticum, since it provides us with the way of getting there"; the idea of Christians as "travelers in search of salvation" finds early expression in the Confessions of St. Augustine.

An equivalent word in Greek is ephodion (ἐφόδιον); like viaticum, the word is used in antiquity to mean "provision for a journey" (literally, "something for the road," from the prefix ἐπ-, "on" + ὁδός, "road, way") and later in Greek patristic literature for the Eucharist administered on the point of death.

In literature

Greek and Roman literary sources from the 5th century BC through the 2nd century AD are consistent in attributing four characteristics to Charon's obol:
 it is a single, low-denomination coin;
 it is placed in the mouth;
 the placement occurs at the time of death;
 it represents a boat fare.

Greek epigrams that were literary versions of epitaphs refer to "the obol that pays the passage of the departed," with some epigrams referring to the belief by mocking or debunking it. The satirist Lucian has Charon himself, in a dialogue of the same name, declare that he collects "an obol from everyone who makes the downward journey." In an elegy of consolation spoken in the person of the dead woman, the Augustan poet Propertius expresses the finality of death by her payment of the bronze coin to the infernal toll collector (portitor). Several other authors mention the fee. Often, an author uses the low value of the coin to emphasize that death makes no distinction between rich and poor; all must pay the same because all must die, and a rich person can take no greater amount into death:

The incongruity of paying what is, in effect, admission to Hell encouraged a comic or satiric treatment, and Charon as a ferryman who must be persuaded, threatened, or bribed to do his job appears to be a literary construct that is not reflected in early classical art. Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood has shown that in 5th-century BC depictions of Charon, as on the funerary vases called lekythoi, he is a non-threatening, even reassuring presence who guides women, adolescents, and children to the afterlife. Humor, as in Aristophanes's comic catabasis The Frogs, "makes the journey to Hades less frightening by articulating it explicitly and trivializing it." Aristophanes makes jokes about the fee, and a character complains that Theseus must have introduced it, characterizing the Athenian hero in his role of city organizer as a bureaucrat.

Lucian satirizes the obol in his essay "On Funerals":

In another satirical work of Lucian, the "Dialogs of the dead", a character called Menippus has just died and Charon is asking for an obol in order to convey him across the river to the underworld, Menippus refuses to pay the obol, and consequently to enter the world of the dead claiming that:

Literally, "You can't get [any obols] from one who doesn't have any."

Archaeological evidence
The use of coins as grave goods shows a variety of practice that casts doubt on the accuracy of the term "Charon's obol" as an interpretational category. The phrase continues to be used, however, to suggest the ritual or religious significance of coinage in a funerary context.

Coins are found in Greek burials by the 5th century BC, as soon as Greece was monetized, and appear throughout the Roman Empire into the 5th century AD, with examples conforming to the Charon's obol type as far west as the Iberian Peninsula, north into Britain, and east to the Vistula river in Poland. The jawbones of skulls found in certain burials in Roman Britain are stained greenish from contact with a copper coin; Roman coins are found later in Anglo-Saxon graves, but often pierced for wearing as a necklace or amulet. Among the ancient Greeks, only about 5 to 10 percent of known burials contain any coins at all; in some Roman cremation cemeteries, however, as many as half the graves yield coins. Many if not most of these occurrences conform to the myth of Charon's obol in neither the number of coins nor their positioning. Variety of placement and number, including but not limited to a single coin in the mouth, is characteristic of all periods and places.

Hellenized world

Some of the oldest coins from Mediterranean tombs have been found on Cyprus. In 2001 Destrooper-Georgiades, a specialist in Achaemenid numismatics, said that investigations of 33 tombs had yielded 77 coins. Although denomination varies, as does the number in any given burial, small coins predominate. Coins started to be placed in tombs almost as soon as they came into circulation on the island in the 6th century, and some predate both the first issue of the obol and any literary reference to Charon's fee.

Although only a small percentage of Greek burials contain coins, among these there are widespread examples of a single coin positioned in the mouth of a skull or with cremation remains. In cremation urns, the coin sometimes adheres to the jawbone of the skull. At Olynthus, 136 coins (mostly bronze, but some silver), were found with burials; in 1932, archaeologists reported that 20 graves had each contained four bronze coins, which they believed were intended for placement in the mouth. A few tombs at Olynthus have contained two coins, but more often a single bronze coin was positioned in the mouth or within the head of the skeleton. In Hellenistic-era tombs at one cemetery in Athens, coins, usually bronze, were found most often in the dead person's mouth, though sometimes in the hand, loose in the grave, or in a vessel. At Chania, an originally Minoan settlement on Crete, a tomb dating from the second half of the 3rd century BC held a rich variety of grave goods, including fine gold jewelry, a gold tray with the image of a bird, a clay vessel, a bronze mirror, a bronze strigil, and a bronze "Charon coin" depicting Zeus. In excavations of 91 tombs at a cemetery in Amphipolis during the mid- to late 1990s, a majority of the dead were found to have a coin in the mouth. The burials dated from the 4th to the late 2nd century BC.

A notable use of a danake occurred in the burial of a woman in 4th-century BC Thessaly, a likely initiate into the Orphic or Dionysiac mysteries. Her religious paraphernalia included gold tablets inscribed with instructions for the afterlife and a terracotta figure of a Bacchic worshipper. Upon her lips was placed a gold danake stamped with the Gorgon's head. Coins begin to appear with greater frequency in graves during the 3rd century BC, along with gold wreaths and plain unguentaria (small bottles for oil) in place of the earlier lekythoi. Black-figure lekythoi had often depicted Dionysiac scenes; the later white-ground vessels often show Charon, usually with his pole, but rarely (or dubiously) accepting the coin.

The Black Sea region has also produced examples of Charon's obol. At Apollonia Pontica, the custom had been practiced from the mid-4th century BC; in one cemetery, for instance, 17 percent of graves contained small bronze local coins in the mouth or hand of the deceased. During 1998 excavations of Pichvnari, on the  coast of present-day Georgia, a single coin was found in seven burials, and a pair of coins in two. The coins, silver triobols of the local Colchian currency, were located near the mouth, with the exception of one that was near the hand. It is unclear whether the dead were Colchians or Greeks. The investigating archaeologists did not regard the practice as typical of the region, but speculate that the local geography lent itself to adapting the Greek myth, as bodies of the dead in actuality had to be ferried across a river from the town to the cemetery.

Near East

Charon's obol is usually regarded as Hellenic, and a single coin in burials is often taken as a mark of Hellenization, but the practice may be independent of Greek influence in some regions. The placing of a coin in the mouth of the deceased is found also during Parthian and Sasanian times in what is now Iran. Curiously, the coin was not the danake of Persian origin, as it was sometimes among the Greeks, but usually a Greek drachma. In the Yazdi region, objects consecrated in graves may include a coin or piece of silver; the custom is thought to be perhaps as old as the Seleucid era and may be a form of Charon's obol.

Discoveries of a single coin near the skull in tombs of the Levant suggest a similar practice among Phoenicians in the Persian period. Jewish ossuaries sometimes contain a single coin; for example, in an ossuary bearing the inscriptional name "Miriam, daughter of Simeon," a coin minted during the reign of Herod Agrippa I, dated 42/43 AD, was found in the skull's mouth. Although the placement of a coin within the skull is uncommon in Jewish antiquity and was potentially an act of idolatry, rabbinic literature preserves an allusion to Charon in a lament for the dead "tumbling aboard the ferry and having to borrow his fare." Boats are sometimes depicted on ossuaries or the walls of Jewish crypts, and one of the coins found within a skull may have been chosen because it depicted a ship.

Western Europe
Cemeteries in the Western Roman Empire vary widely: in a 1st-century BC community in Cisalpine Gaul, coins were included in more than 40 percent of graves, but none was placed in the mouth of the deceased; the figure is only 10 percent for cremations at Empúries in Spain and York in Britain. On the Iberian Peninsula, evidence interpreted as Charon's obol has been found at Tarragona. In Belgic Gaul, varying deposits of coins are found with the dead for the 1st through 3rd centuries, but are most frequent in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Thirty Gallo-Roman burials near the Pont de Pasly, Soissons, each contained a coin for Charon. Germanic burials show a preference for gold coins, but even within a single cemetery and a narrow time period, their disposition varies.

In one Merovingian cemetery of Frénouville, Normandy, which was in use for four centuries after Christ, coins are found in a minority of the graves. At one time, the cemetery was regarded as exhibiting two distinct phases: an earlier Gallo-Roman period when the dead were buried with vessels, notably of glass, and Charon's obol; and later, when they were given funerary dress and goods according to Frankish custom. This neat division, however, has been shown to be misleading. In the 3rd- to 4th-century area of the cemetery, coins were placed near the skulls or hands, sometimes protected by a pouch or vessel, or were found in the grave-fill as if tossed in. Bronze coins usually numbered one or two per grave, as would be expected from the custom of Charon's obol, but one burial contained 23 bronze coins, and another held a gold solidus and a semissis. The latter examples indicate that coins might have represented relative social status. In the newer part of the cemetery, which remained in use through the 6th century, the deposition patterns for coinage were similar, but the coins themselves were not contemporaneous with the burials, and some were pierced for wearing. The use of older coins may reflect a shortage of new currency, or may indicate that the old coins held a traditional symbolic meaning apart from their denominational value. "The varied placement of coins of different values … demonstrates at least partial if not complete loss of understanding of the original religious function of Charon’s obol," remarks Bonnie Effros, a specialist in Merovingian burial customs. "These factors make it difficult to determine the rite’s significance."

Although the rite of Charon's obol was practiced no more uniformly in Northern Europe than in Greece, there are examples of individual burials or small groups conforming to the pattern. At Broadstairs in Kent, a young man had been buried with a Merovingian gold tremissis (ca. 575) in his mouth. A gold-plated coin was found in the mouth of a young man buried on the Isle of Wight in the mid-6th century; his other grave goods included vessels, a drinking horn, a knife, and gaming-counters of ivory with one cobalt-blue glass piece.

Scandinavian and Germanic gold bracteates found in burials of the 5th and 6th centuries, particularly those in Britain, have also been interpreted in light of Charon's obol. These gold disks, similar to coins though generally single-sided, were influenced by late Roman imperial coins and medallions but feature iconography from Norse myth and runic inscriptions. The stamping process created an extended rim that forms a frame with a loop for threading; the bracteates often appear in burials as a woman's necklace. A function comparable to that of Charon's obol is suggested by examples such as a man's burial at Monkton in Kent and a group of several male graves on Gotland, Sweden, for which the bracteate was deposited in a pouch beside the body. In the Gotland burials, the bracteates lack rim and loop, and show no traces of wear, suggesting that they had not been intended for everyday use.

According to one interpretation, the purse-hoard in the Sutton Hoo ship burial (Suffolk, East Anglia), which contained a variety of Merovingian gold coins, unites the traditional Germanic voyage to the afterlife with "an unusually splendid form of Charon's obol." The burial yielded 37 gold tremisses dating from the late 6th and early 7th century, three unstruck coin blanks, and two small gold ingots. It has been conjectured that the coins were to pay the oarsmen who would row the ship into the next world, while the ingots were meant for the steersmen. Although Charon is usually a lone figure in depictions from both antiquity and the modern era, there is some slight evidence that his ship might be furnished with oarsmen. A fragment of 6th century BC pottery has been interpreted as Charon sitting in the stern as steersman of a boat fitted with ten pairs of oars and rowed by eidola (εἴδωλα), shades of the dead. A reference in Lucian seems also to imply that the shades might row the boat.

In Scandinavia, scattered examples of Charon's obol have been documented from the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period; in the Viking Age eastern Sweden produces the best evidence, Denmark rarely, and Norway and Finland inconclusively. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Charon's obol appears in graves in Sweden, Scania, and Norway. Swedish folklore documents the custom from the 18th into the 20th century.

Among Christians
The custom of Charon's obol not only continued into the Christian era, but was adopted by Christians, as a single coin was sometimes placed in the mouth for Christian burials. At Arcy-Sainte-Restitue in Picardy, a Merovingian grave yielded a coin of Constantine I, the first Christian emperor, used as Charon's obol. In Britain, the practice was just as frequent, if not more so, among Christians and persisted even to the end of the 19th century. A folklorist writing in 1914 was able to document a witness in Britain who had seen a penny placed in the mouth of an old man as he lay in his coffin. In 1878, Pope Pius IX was entombed with a coin. The practice was widely documented around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Greece, where the coin was sometimes accompanied by a key.

'Ghost' coins and crosses

So-called "ghost coins" also appear with the dead. These are impressions of an actual coin or numismatic icon struck into a small piece of gold foil.  In a 5th- or 4th-century BC grave at Syracuse, Sicily, a small rectangular gold leaf stamped with a dual-faced figure, possibly Demeter/Kore, was found in the skeleton's mouth. In a marble cremation box from the mid-2nd century BC, the "Charon's piece"  took the form of a bit of gold foil stamped with an owl; in addition to the charred bone fragments, the box also contained gold leaves from a wreath of the type sometimes associated with the mystery religions. Within an Athenian family burial plot of the 2nd century BC, a thin gold disk similarly stamped with the owl of Athens had been placed in the mouth of each male.

These examples of the "Charon's piece" resemble in material and size the tiny inscribed tablet or funerary amulet called a lamella (Latin for a metal-foil sheet) or a Totenpass, a "passport for the dead" with instructions on navigating the afterlife, conventionally regarded as a form of Orphic or Dionysiac devotional. Several of these prayer sheets have been found in positions that indicate placement in or on the deceased's mouth. A functional equivalence with the Charon's piece is further suggested by the evidence of flattened coins used as mouth coverings (epistomia) from graves in Crete. A gold phylactery with a damaged inscription invoking the syncretic god Sarapis was found within the skull in a burial from the late 1st century AD in southern Rome. The gold tablet may have served both as a protective amulet during the deceased's lifetime and then, with its insertion into the mouth, possibly on the model of Charon's obol, as a Totenpass.

In a late Roman-era burial in Douris, near Baalbek, Lebanon, the forehead, nose, and mouth of the deceased — a woman, in so far as skeletal remains can indicate — were covered with sheets of gold-leaf. She wore a wreath made from gold oak leaves, and her clothing had been sewn with gold-leaf ovals decorated with female faces. Several glass vessels were arranged at her feet, and her discoverers interpreted the bronze coin close to her head as an example of Charon's obol.

Textual evidence also exists for covering portions of the deceased's body with gold foil. One of the accusations of heresy against the Phrygian Christian movement known as the Montanists was that they sealed the mouths of their dead with plates of gold like initiates into the mysteries; factual or not, the charge indicates an anxiety that Christian practice be distinguished from that of other religions, and again suggests that Charon's obol and the "Orphic" gold tablets could fulfill a similar purpose. The early Christian poet Prudentius seems to be referring either to these inscribed gold-leaf tablets or to the larger gold-foil coverings in one of his condemnations of the mystery religions. Prudentius says that auri lammina ("sheets of gold") were placed on the bodies of initiates as part of funeral rites. This practice may or may not be distinct from the funerary use of gold leaf inscribed with figures and placed on the eyes, mouths, and chests of warriors in Macedonian burials during the late Archaic period (580–460 BC); in September 2008, archaeologists working near Pella in northern Greece publicized the discovery of twenty warrior graves in which the deceased wore bronze helmets and were supplied with iron swords and knives along with these gold-leaf coverings.

Goldblattkreuze

In Gaul and in Alemannic territory, Christian graves of the Merovingian period reveal an analogous Christianized practice in the form of gold or gold-alloy leaf shaped like a cross, imprinted with designs, and deposited possibly as votives or amulets for the deceased. These paper-thin, fragile gold crosses are sometimes referred to by scholars with the German term Goldblattkreuze. They appear to have been sewn onto the deceased's garment just before burial, not worn during life, and in this practice are comparable to the pierced Roman coins found in Anglo-Saxon graves that were attached to clothing instead of or in addition to being threaded onto a necklace.

The crosses are characteristic of Lombardic Italy (Cisalpine Gaul of the Roman imperial era), where they were fastened to veils and placed over the deceased's mouth in a continuation of Byzantine practice. Throughout the Lombardic realm and north into Germanic territory, the crosses gradually replaced bracteates during the 7th century. The transition is signalled by Scandinavian bracteates found in Kent that are stamped with cross motifs resembling the Lombardic crosses. Two plain gold-foil crosses of Latin form, found in the burial of a 7th-century East Saxon king, are the first known examples from England, announced in 2004. The king's other grave goods included glass vessels made in England and two different Merovingian gold coins, each of which had a cross on the reverse. Coins of the period were adapted with Christian iconography in part to facilitate their use as an alternative to amulets of traditional religions.

Scandinavian gullgubber
Scandinavia also produced small and fragile gold-foil pieces, called gullgubber, that were worked in repoussé with human figures. These begin to appear in the late Iron Age and continue into the Viking Age. In form they resemble the gold-foil pieces such as those found at Douris, but the gullgubber were not fashioned with a fastening element and are not associated with burials. They occur in the archaeological record sometimes singly, but most often in large numbers. Some scholars have speculated that they are a form of "temple money" or votive offering, but Sharon Ratke has suggested that they might represent good wishes for travelers, perhaps as a metaphor for the dead on their journey to the otherworld, especially those depicting "wraiths."

Religious significance
Ships often appear in Greek and Roman funerary art representing a voyage to the Isles of the Blessed, and a 2nd-century sarcophagus found in Velletri, near Rome, included Charon's boat among its subject matter. In modern-era Greek folkloric survivals of Charon (as Charos the death demon), sea voyage and river crossing are conflated, and in one later tale, the soul is held hostage by pirates, perhaps representing the oarsmen, who require a ransom for release. The mytheme of the passage to the afterlife as a voyage or crossing is not unique to Greco-Roman belief nor to Indo-European culture as a whole, as it occurs also in ancient Egyptian religion and other belief systems that are culturally unrelated. The boatman of the dead himself appears in diverse cultures with no special relation to Greece or to each other. A Sumerian model for Charon has been proposed, and the figure has possible antecedents among the Egyptians; scholars are divided as to whether these influenced the tradition of Charon, but the 1st-century BC historian Diodorus Siculus thought so and mentions the fee. It might go without saying that only when coinage comes into common use is the idea of payment introduced, but coins were placed in graves before the appearance of the Charon myth in literature.

Because of the diversity of religious beliefs in the Greco-Roman world, and because the mystery religions that were most concerned with the afterlife and soteriology placed a high value on secrecy and arcane knowledge, no single theology has been reconstructed that would account for Charon's obol. Franz Cumont regarded the numerous examples found in Roman tombs as "evidence of no more than a traditional rite which men performed without attaching a definite meaning to it." The use of a coin for the rite seems to depend not just on the myth of Charon, but also on other religious and mythic traditions associating wealth and the underworld.

Death and wealth

In cultures that practiced the rite of Charon's obol, the infernal ferryman who requires payment is one of a number of underworld deities associated with wealth. For the Greeks, Pluto (Ploutōn, Πλούτων), the ruler of the dead and the consort of Persephone, became conflated with Plutus (Ploutos, Πλοῦτος), wealth personified; Plato points out the meaningful ambiguity of this etymological play in his dialogue Cratylus. Hermes is a god of boundaries, travel, and liminality, and thus conveys souls across the border that separates the living from the dead, acting as a psychopomp, but he was also a god of exchange, commerce, and profit. The name of his Roman counterpart Mercury was thought in antiquity to share its derivation with the Latin word merces, "goods, merchandise."

The numerous chthonic deities among the Romans were also frequently associated with wealth. In his treatise On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero identifies the Roman god Dis Pater with the Greek Pluton, explaining that riches are hidden in and arise from the earth. Dis Pater is sometimes regarded as a chthonic Saturn, ruler of the Golden Age, whose consort Ops was a goddess of abundance. The obscure goddess Angerona, whose iconography depicted silence and secrecy, and whose festival followed that of Ops, seems to have regulated communications between the realm of the living and the underworld; she may have been a guardian of both arcane knowledge and stored, secret wealth. When a Roman died, the treasury at the Temple of Venus in the sacred grove of the funeral goddess Libitina collected a coin as a "death tax".

The Republican poet Ennius locates the "treasuries of Death" across the Acheron. Romans threw an annual offering of coins into the Lacus Curtius, a pit or chasm in the middle of the Roman Forum that was regarded as a mundus or "port of communication" with the underworld.

Chthonic wealth is sometimes attributed to the Celtic horned god of the Cernunnos type, one of the deities proposed as the divine progenitor of the Gauls that Julius Caesar identified with Dis Pater. On a relief from the Gallic civitas of the Remi, the god holds in his lap a sack or purse, the contents of which — identified by scholars variably as coins or food (grain, small fruits, or nuts) — may be intentionally ambiguous in expressing desired abundance. The antler-horned god appears on coins from Gaul and Britain, in explicit association with wealth. In his best-known representation, on the problematic Gundestrup Cauldron, he is surrounded by animals with mythico-religious significance; taken in the context of an accompanying scene of initiation, the horned god can be interpreted as presiding over the process of metempsychosis, the cycle of death and rebirth, regarded by ancient literary sources as one of the most important tenets of Celtic religion and characteristic also of Pythagoreanism and the Orphic or Dionysiac mysteries.

From its 7th-century BC beginnings in western Anatolia, ancient coinage was viewed not as distinctly secular, but as a form of communal trust bound up in the ties expressed by religion. The earliest known coin-hoard from antiquity was found buried in a pot within the foundations of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, dating to the mid-6th century BC. The iconography of gods and various divine beings appeared regularly on coins issued by Greek cities and later by Rome. The effect of monetization on religious practice is indicated by notations in Greek calendars of sacrifices pertaining to fees for priests and prices for offerings and victims. One fragmentary text seems to refer to a single obol to be paid by each initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries to the priestess of Demeter, the symbolic value of which is perhaps to be interpreted in light of Charon's obol as the initiate's gaining access to knowledge required for successful passage to the afterlife.

Erwin Rohde argued, on the basis of later folk customs, that the obol was originally a payment to the dead person himself, as a way of compensating him for the loss of property that passed to the living, or as a token substitute for the more ancient practice of consigning his property to the grave with him. In Rohde's view, the obol was later attached to the myth of the ferryman as an ex post facto explanation.

In the view of Richard Seaford, the introduction of coinage to Greece and the theorizing about value it provoked was concomitant with and even contributed to the creation of Greek metaphysics. Plato criticizes common currency as "polluting", but also says that the guardians of his ideal republic should have divine gold and silver money from the gods always present in their souls. This Platonic "money in the soul" holds the promise of "divinity, homogeneity, unchanging permanence, self-sufficiency, invisibility."

The coin as food or seal
Attempts to explain the symbolism of the rite also must negotiate the illogical placement of the coin in the mouth. The Latin term viaticum makes sense of Charon's obol as "sustenance for the journey," and it has been suggested that coins replaced offerings of food for the dead in Roman tradition.

This dichotomy of food for the living and gold for the dead is a theme in the myth of King Midas, versions of which draw on elements of the Dionysian mysteries. The Phrygian king's famous "golden touch" was a divine gift from Dionysus, but its acceptance separated him from the human world of nourishment and reproduction: both his food and his daughter were transformed by contact with him into immutable, unreciprocal gold. In some versions of the myth, Midas's hard-won insight into the meaning of life and the limitations of earthly wealth is accompanied by conversion to the cult of Dionysus. Having learned his lessons as an initiate into the mysteries, and after ritual immersion in the river Pactolus, Midas forsakes the "bogus eternity" of gold for spiritual rebirth.

John Cuthbert Lawson, an early 20th-century folklorist whose approach was influenced by the Cambridge Ritualists, argued that both the food metaphor and the coin as payment for the ferryman were later rationalizations of the original ritual. Although single coins from inhumations appear most often inside or in the vicinity of the skull, they are also found in the hand or a pouch, a more logical place to carry a payment. Lawson viewed the coin as originally a seal, used as potsherds sometimes were on the lips of the dead to block the return of the soul, believed to pass from the body with the last breath. One of the first steps in preparing a corpse was to seal the lips, sometimes with linen or gold bands, to prevent the soul's return. The stopping of the mouth by Charon's obol has been used to illuminate burial practices intended, for instance, to prevent vampires or other revenants from returning.

The placement of the coin on the mouth can be compared to practices pertaining to the disposition of the dead in the Near East. An Egyptian custom is indicated by a burial at Abydos, dating from the 22nd Dynasty (945–720 BC) or later, for which the deceased woman's mouth was covered with a faience uadjet, or protective eye amulet. Oval mouth coverings, perforated for fastening, are found in burials throughout the Near East from the 1st century BC through the 1st century AD, providing evidence of an analogous practice for sealing the mouths of the dead in regions not under Roman Imperial control. Bahraini excavations at the necropolis of Al-Hajjar produced examples of these coverings in gold leaf, one of which retained labial imprints.

A coin may make a superior seal because of its iconography; in the Thessalian burial of an initiate described above, for instance, the coin on the lips depicted the apotropaic device of the Gorgon's head. The seal may also serve to regulate the speech of the dead, which was sometimes sought through rituals for its prophetic powers, but also highly regulated as dangerous; mystery religions that offered arcane knowledge of the afterlife prescribed ritual silence. A golden key (chrusea klês) was laid on the tongue of initiates as a symbol of the revelation they were obligated to keep secret. "Charon's obol" is often found in burials with objects or inscriptions indicative of mystery cult, and the coin figures in a Latin prose narrative that alludes to initiation ritual, the "Cupid and Psyche" story from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius.

The catabasis of Psyche

In the 2nd-century "Cupid and Psyche" narrative by Apuleius, Psyche, whose name is a Greek word for "soul," is sent on an underworld quest to retrieve the box containing Proserpina's secret beauty, in order to restore the love of Cupid. The tale lends itself to multiple interpretational approaches, and it has frequently been analyzed as an allegory of Platonism as well as of religious initiation, iterating on a smaller scale the plot of the Metamorphoses as a whole, which concerns the protagonist Lucius's journey towards salvation through the cult of Isis. Ritual elements were associated with the story even before Apuleius's version, as indicated in visual representations; for instance, a 1st-century BC sardonyx cameo depicting the wedding of Cupid and Psyche shows an attendant elevating a liknon (basket) used in Dionysiac initiation. C. Moreschini saw the Metamorphoses as moving away from the Platonism of Apuleius’s earlier Apology toward a vision of mystic salvation.

Before embarking on her descent, Psyche receives instructions for navigating the underworld:

The two coins serve the plot by providing Psyche with fare for the return; allegorically, this return trip suggests the soul's rebirth, perhaps a Platonic reincarnation or the divine form implied by the so-called Orphic gold tablets. The myth of Charon has rarely been interpreted in light of mystery religions, despite the association in Apuleius and archaeological evidence of burials that incorporate both Charon's obol and cultic paraphernalia. And yet "the image of the ferry," Helen King notes, "hints that death is not final, but can be reversed, because the ferryman could carry his passengers either way." A funeral rite is itself a kind of initiation, or the transition of the soul into another stage of "life."

Coins on the eyes?
Contrary to popular etiology there is little evidence to connect the myth of Charon to the custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, though the larger gold-foil coverings discussed above might include pieces shaped for the eyes. Pairs of coins are sometimes found in burials, including cremation urns; among the collections of the British Museum is an urn from Athens, ca. 300 BC, that contained cremated remains, two obols, and a terracotta figure of a mourning siren. Ancient Greek and Latin literary sources, however, mention  a pair of coins only when a return trip is anticipated, as in the case of Psyche's catabasis, and never in regard to sealing the eyes.

Only rarely does the placement of a pair of coins suggest they might have covered the eyes. In Judea, a pair of silver denarii were found in the eye sockets of a skull; the burial dated to the 2nd century A.D. occurs within a Jewish community, but the religious affiliation of the deceased is unclear. Jewish ritual in antiquity did not require that the eye be sealed by an object, and it is debatable whether the custom of placing coins on the eyes of the dead was practiced among Jews prior to the modern era. During the 1980s, the issue became embroiled with the controversies regarding the Shroud of Turin when it was argued that the eye area revealed the outlines of coins; since the placement of coins on the eyes for burial is not securely attested in antiquity, apart from the one example from Judea cited above, this interpretation of evidence obtained through digital image processing cannot be claimed as firm support for the shroud's authenticity.

Coins at the feet
Coins are found also at the deceased's feet, although the purpose of this positioning is uncertain. John Chrysostom mentions and disparages the use of coins depicting Alexander the Great as amulets attached by the living to the head or feet, and offers the Christian cross as a more powerful alternative for both salvation and healing:

Christian transformation

With instructions that recall those received by Psyche for her heroic descent, or the inscribed Totenpass for initiates, the Christian protagonist of a 14th-century French pilgrimage narrative is advised:

Anglo-Saxon and early–medieval Irish missionaries took the idea of a viaticum literally, carrying the Eucharistic bread and oil with them everywhere.

The need for a viaticum figures in a myth-tinged account of the death of King William II of England, told by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar: dying from a battle wound and delirious, the desperate king kept calling out for the corpus domini (Lord's body) until a huntsman acted as priest and gave him flowering herbs as his viaticum. In the dominant tradition of William's death, he is killed while hunting on the second day of red stag season, which began August 1, the date of both Lughnasadh and the Feast of St. Peter's Chains.

The hunt is also associated with the administering of a herbal viaticum in the medieval chansons de geste, in which traditional heroic culture and Christian values interpenetrate. The chansons offer multiple examples of grass or foliage substituted as a viaticum when a warrior or knight meets his violent end outside the Christian community. Sarah Kay views this substitute rite as communion with the Girardian "primitive sacred," speculating that "pagan" beliefs lurk beneath a Christian veneer. In the Raoul de Cambrai, the dying Bernier receives three blades of grass in place of the corpus Domini. Two other chansons place this desire for communion within the mytheme of the sacrificial boar hunt. In Daurel et Beton, Bove is murdered next to the boar he just killed; he asks his own killer to grant him communion "with a leaf," and when he is denied, he then asks that his enemy eat his heart instead. This request is granted; the killer partakes of the victim's body as an alternative sacrament. In Garin le Loheren, Begon is similarly assassinated next to the corpse of a boar, and takes communion with three blades of grass.

Kay's conjecture that a pre-Christian tradition accounts for the use of leaves as the viaticum is supported by evidence from Hellenistic magico-religious practice, the continuance of which is documented in Gaul and among Germanic peoples. Spells from the Greek Magical Papyri often require the insertion of a leaf — an actual leaf, a papyrus scrap, the representation of a leaf in metal foil, or an inscribed rectangular lamella (as described above) — into the mouth of a corpse or skull, as a means of conveying messages to and from the realms of the living and the dead. In one spell attributed to Pitys the Thessalian, the practitioner is instructed to inscribe a flax leaf with magic words and to insert it into the mouth of a dead person.

The insertion of herbs into the mouth of the dead, with a promise of resurrection, occurs also in the Irish tale "The Kern in the Narrow Stripes," the earliest written version of which dates to the 1800s but is thought to preserve an oral tradition of early Irish myth. The kern of the title is an otherworldly trickster figure who performs a series of miracles; after inducing twenty armed men to kill each other, he produces herbs from his bag and instructs his host's gatekeeper to place them within the jaws of each dead man to bring him back to life. At the end of the tale, the mysterious visitor is revealed as Manannán mac Lir, the Irish god known in other stories for his herd of pigs that offer eternal feasting from their self-renewing flesh.

Sacrament and superstition
Scholars have suggested that the use of a viaticum in the Christian rite for the dying reflected preexisting religious practice, with Charon's obol replaced by a more acceptably Christian sacrament.  In one miraculous story, recounted by Pope Innocent III in a letter dated 1213, the coins in a moneybox were said literally to have been transformed into communion wafers. Because of the viaticum's presumed pre-Christian origin, an anti-Catholic historian of religion at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries propagandized the practice, stating that "it was from the heathens [that] the papists borrowed it." Contemporary scholars are more likely to explain the borrowing in light of the deep-seated conservatism of burial practices or as a form of religious syncretism motivated by a psychological need for continuity.

Among Christians, the practice of burying a corpse with a coin in its mouth was never widespread enough to warrant condemnation from the Church, but the substitute rite came under official scrutiny; the viaticum should not be, but often was, placed in the mouth after death, apparently out of a superstitious desire for its magical protection. By the time Augustine wrote his Confessions, "African bishops had forbidden the celebration of the eucharist in the presence of the corpse. This was necessary to stop the occasional practice of placing the eucharistic bread in the mouth of the dead, a viaticum which replaced the coin needed to pay Charon’s fare." Pope Gregory I, in his biography of Benedict of Nursia, tells the story of a monk whose body was twice ejected from his tomb; Benedict advised the family to restore the dead man to his resting place with the viaticum placed on his chest. The placement suggests a functional equivalence with the Goldblattkreuze and the Orphic gold tablets; its purpose — to assure the deceased's successful passage to the afterlife — is analogous to that of Charon's obol and the Totenpässe of mystery initiates, and in this case it acts also as a seal to block the dead from returning to the world of the living.

Ideally, the journey into death would begin immediately after taking the sacrament. Eusebius offers an example of an elderly Christian who managed to hold off death until his grandson placed a portion of the Eucharist in his mouth. In a general audience October 24, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI quoted Paulinus's account of the death of St. Ambrose, who received and swallowed the corpus Domini and immediately "gave up his spirit, taking the good Viaticum with him. His soul, thus refreshed by the virtue of that food, now enjoys the company of Angels." A perhaps apocryphal story from a Cistercian chronicle circa 1200 indicates that the viaticum was regarded as an apotropaic seal against demons (ad avertendos daemonas), who nevertheless induced a woman to attempt to snatch the Host (viaticum) from the mouth of Pope Urban III's corpse. Like Charon's obol, the viaticum can serve as both sustenance for the journey and seal.

In the 19th century, the German scholar Georg Heinrici proposed that Greek and Roman practices pertaining to the care of the dead, specifically including Charon's obol, shed light on vicarious baptism, or baptism for the dead, to which St. Paul refers in a letter to the Corinthians. A century after Heinrici, James Downey examined the funerary practices of Christian Corinthians in historical context and argued that they intended vicarious baptism to protect the deceased's soul against interference on the journey to the afterlife. Both vicarious baptism and the placement of a viaticum in the mouth of a person already dead reflect Christian responses to, rather than outright rejection of, ancient religious traditions pertaining to the cult of the dead.

Art of the modern era

Although Charon has been a popular subject of art, particularly in the 19th century, the act of payment is less often depicted. An exception is the Charon and Psyche of John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, exhibited ca. 1883. The story of Cupid and Psyche found several expressions among the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their literary peers, and Stanhope, while mourning the death of his only child, produced a number of works dealing with the afterlife. His Psyche paintings were most likely based on the narrative poem of William Morris that was a retelling of the version by Apuleius. In Stanhope's vision, the ferryman is a calm and patriarchal figure more in keeping with the Charon of the archaic Greek lekythoi than the fearsome antagonist often found in Christian-era art and literature.

Modern poetry
Poets of the modern era have continued to make use of Charon's obol as a living allusion. In "Don Juan aux enfers" ("Don Juan in Hell"), the French Symboliste poet Charles Baudelaire marks the eponymous hero's entry to the underworld with his payment of the obol to Charon. A. E. Housman speaks of a man "Crossing alone the nighted ferry / With the one coin for fee,"  to "the just city / And free land of the grave."
Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney makes a less direct allusion with a simile — "words imposing on my tongue like obols" — in the "Fosterage" section of his long poem Singing School:

See also
 Hell money

References

Further reading

Death in Greek mythology
Death customs
Archaeology of death
Roman mythology
Ancient Greek religion
Ancient Roman religion
Gallo-Roman religion
Mythological objects
Obol
Payments


False Radiosity is a 3D computer graphics technique used to create texture mapping for objects that emulates patch interaction algorithms in radiosity rendering. Though practiced in some form since the late 90s, this term was coined only around 2002 by architect Andrew Hartness, then head of 3D and real-time design at Ateliers Jean Nouvel.

During the period of nascent commercial enthusiasm for radiosity-enhanced imagery, but prior to the democratization of powerful computational hardware, architects and graphic artists experimented with time-saving 3D rendering techniques. By darkening areas of texture maps corresponding to corners, joints and recesses, and applying maps via self-illumination or diffuse mapping in a 3D program, a radiosity-like effect of patch interaction could be created with a standard scan-line renderer. Successful emulation of radiosity required a theoretical understanding and graphic application of patch view factors, path tracing and global illumination algorithms. Texture maps were usually produced with image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop. The advantage of this method is decreased rendering time and easily modifiable overall lighting strategies.

Another common approach similar to false radiosity is the manual placement of standard omni-type lights with limited attenuation in places in the 3D scene where the artist would expect radiosity reflections to occur. This method uses many lights and can require an advanced light-grouping system, depending on what assigned materials/objects are illuminated, how many surfaces require false radiosity treatment, and to what extent it is anticipated that lighting strategies be set up for frequent changes.

References
Autodesk interview with Hartness about False Radiosity and real-time design

See also
Ambient occlusion
CGarchitect interviewReal-time 3D design

3D computer graphics
Computer graphics algorithms
Image processing
Rendering systems


María Angels Ramón-Llin i Martínez (born 15 June 1963 in Valencia, Spain) is a Spanish politician who belongs to the People's Party (PP).

Married with one son and daughter, Ramón-Llin holds a degree in law. She entered politics in 1982 when she joined Unió Valenciana (UV) a right wing regional party. She served as President of its youth wing from 1983 to 1991. In 1987 when she was elected as a UV deputy to the Corts Valencianes, the Valencian regional parliament, serving until 2004. During that period she served as Environment and Agriculture minister (1995-1997) and Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1999-2003) in the Valencian regional administration She abandoned UV on 11 January 1999 and later joined the PP. In 2004 she moved to national politics when she was elected to the Spanish Congress of Deputies representing Valencia region for the PP. She did not stand in 2008 but remains a member of the Provincial committee of the PP in Valencia region.

Ramón-Llin also has a diploma in music and is a qualified teacher of Valencian.

References

External links
Biography at Spanish Congress website

1963 births
Living people
Politicians from Valencia
Members of the 8th Congress of Deputies (Spain)
Members of the Corts Valencianes
People's Party (Spain) politicians
Valencian Union politicians
21st-century Spanish women politicians
Valencia city councillors

Teachers of Catalan


Grant Munro  LL. D. (April 25, 1923 – December 9, 2017) was a Canadian animator, filmmaker and actor. In 1952, he co-starred with Jean-Paul Ladouceur in Norman McLaren's Neighbours. His film, Christmas Cracker, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965.

Early life
Munro was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. After graduating from Gordon Bell High School, he went to the
Musgrove School of Art and the Winnipeg School of Art. In 1944, he graduated with honors from the Ontario College of Art and joined the National Film Board (NFB) in the same year.

Career
Munro's work as an animator first won notice during 1945, when he set the songs "My Darling Clementine" and "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" to animated cut-outs. He left the NFB in 1947 to work with another company, returning in 1951, in time to perform the physically demanding role of one of the neighbours in Norman McLaren's Neighbours, a film which used the technique known as "pixilation" (a term coined by Munro) and which won both a Canadian Film Award and an Academy Award. In 1957, he moved to London to work as Director of Animation for George Dunning's TV Cartoons; he returned to the NFB in 1961. In 1970, he moved to Cuba and, for two years, worked for the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos.

Munro collaborated with McLaren on the animated films Two Bagatelles (1952),  Christmas Cracker (1963) and Canon (1964). In the 1970s, his focus shifted to documentaries. He directed: Tours en l'air (1974), a film about work of dancers Anna-Marie and David Holmes; Boo Hoo (1975), which concerned a cemetery and crematorium in Saint John, New Brunswick; and Animated Motion (parts 1–5, 1976–8) and McLaren on McLaren (1983), which documented the work and philosophy of his friend and colleague. He also directed See You in the Funny Papers (1983), which examined the life and work of cartoonist Lynn Johnston.

Munro retired from the National Film Board in 1988. He died in Montreal on December 9, 2017, at the age of 94.

Honours
On June 20, 2007 Concordia University awarded Munro an honorary doctorate in recognition of his legacy for generations of filmmakers.

On October 10, 2008, Munro was made an Officer in the Order of Canada by Governor General Michaëlle Jean.  The backgrounder to the award read as follows:
Grant Munro is a pioneering animator and filmmaker. One of the earliest and longest-serving members of the National Film Board of Canada, he developed innovative techniques that influenced both the film industry and other animators. He produced films that were used as public education tools in schools across Canada, and collaborated with the Montreal Children’s Hospital to create educational films for children with learning disabilities. As well, he was involved in making several award-winning film's and has been an inspiring role model and dedicated mentor to several generations of young filmmakers.

Grant Munro Rediscovered
On December 4, 2003, the Museum of Modern Art paid tribute to Munro with Grant Munro Rediscovered, a retrospective program of his work:

On the occasion of Grant Munro’s eightieth birthday and the release of a new DVD, Cut-Up: The Films of Grant Munro, the Museum of Modern Art pays tribute to this seminal but under-recognized animator. Working from within the historic Animation Unit of the National Film Board of Canada from 1945 through the early 1970s, Munro directed, produced, shot, edited, and even acted in some of the most significant hand-drawn and pixilated animation ever made. A frequent collaborator with Norman McLaren, Munro brought a wicked wit and sublime grace to the art.

In 2003, a DVD of his work entitled Cut-Up: The Films of Grant Munro was released. It includes two Munro-McLaren collaborations which they did not complete: On the Farm and Six and Seven Eighths.

Filmography
Director and/or Producer,
Animator

Let's All Sing Together: No. 3 - animated short, Norman McLaren 1945 - co-animator with René Jodoin
Let's All Sing Together: No. 4 - animated short, Norman McLaren 1945 - co-animator with Jim MacKay and Jean-Paul Ladouceur
Let's All Sing Together: No. 5 - animated short, Norman McLaren 1945 - co-animator with Jean-Paul Ladouceur
Let's All Sing Together: No. 6 - animated short, Norman McLaren 1945 - co-animator with Jean-Paul Ladouceur and René Jodoin
The Three Blind Mice - animated short, George Dunning 1945 - co-animator with George Dunning and Robert Verrall
Stanley Takes a Trip - animated short, 1947 - co-animator with Helen MacKay, co-director with Helen MacKay and Jim MacKay
Christmas Carols - animated short, 1947 - co-animator
Two Bagatelles - experimental film, 1952 - co-director with Norman McLaren
Neighbours - experimental film, Norman McLaren 1952 - cast
One Little Indian - puppet film, 1954 - director
Huff and Puff - animated training film, Graham Crabtree 1955 -co-animator with Gerald Potterton
The Standard Range Approach - training film, Michael Birch and René Jodoin 1957 - animator
My Financial Career - animated short, Gerald Potterton 1962 - co-animator with Gerald Potterton
Pot-pourri - montage, 1962 - co-director with Jeff Hale, Derek Lamb, Austin Campbell, Kaj Pindal, Cameron Guess and Rhoda Leyer
What Farm Price Support Means to You - documentary short, Ernest Reid 1962 - animator
Christmas Cracker - animated short 1963 - co-director with Norman McLaren, Gerald Potterton and Jeff Hale
Seven Surprizes - compilation 1963 - co-director with Norman McLaren, and Claude Jutra
Canon - animated film, 1964 - co-producer and co-director with Norman McLaren
The Animal Movie - animated short film, 1966 - animator, co-director with Ron Tunis
Toys - documentary short, 1966 - producer, director
Ashes of Doom - short film, 1970 - editor, co-director with Nadia Salnick
Where There's Smoke - compilation, 1970 - co-director
General Health - documentary short, 1970 - co-director with Břetislav Pojar and Don Arioli
Nutrition - documentary short, 1970 - co-director with Břetislav Pojar and Don Arioli
Percy Saltzman Anti-Smoking Clip - documentary short, 1971 - co-director with Don Arioli
Tour en l'air - documentary short, 1974 - co-editor, producer, director
Boo Hoo - documentary short, 1975 - director
Animated Motion: Part 1 - instructional film, 1976 - co-producer and co-director with Norman McLaren
Animated Motion: Part 2 - instructional film, 1976 - co-producer and co-director with Norman McLaren
Animated Motion: Part 3 - instructional film, 1977 - co-producer and co-director with Norman McLaren
Animated Motion: Part 4 - instructional film, 1977 - co-producer and co-director with Norman McLaren
Animated Motion: Part 5 - instructional film, 1978 - co-producer and co-director with Norman McLaren
McLaren on McLaren - documentary short 1983 - director
See You in the Funny Papers - documentary short, 1983 - co-editor, producer, director

Awards

One Little Indian (1954)
 Rapallo International Film Festival, Rapallo, Italy: Great Cup of the Province of Genoa, 1956
 Rapallo International Film Festival, Rapallo, Italy: First Prize & Silver Medal, Abstract Films, 1956
National Committee on Films for Safety, Chicago: First Prize, Bronze Plaque, Traffic & Transportation, 1955
 Golden Reel International Film Festival, Film Council of America, New York: Recognition of Merit, 1955
 Kootenay Film Festival, Nelson, British Columbia: Certificate of Merit, Second Award, Artistic Achievement, 1955
 7th Canadian Film Awards, Toronto: Honorable Mention, Non-Theatrical, 1955

Pot-pourri (1962)
 14th Canadian Film Awards, Toronto: Award of Merit - Filmed Commercials (Public Service), 1962

Christmas Cracker (1963)
 Golden Gate International Film Festival, San Francisco: First Prize, Best Animated Short, 1964
 Electronic, Nuclear and Teleradio Cinematographic Review, Rome: Grand Prize for Technique, Films for Children, 1965
 Electronic, Nuclear and Teleradio Cinematographic Review, Rome: Grand Prize for Animation Technique, 1965
 Film Centrum Foundation Film Show, Naarden, Netherlands: Silver Squirrel, Second Prize 1966
 Philadelphia International Festival of Short Films, Philadelphia: Award of Exceptional Merit, 1967
 Landers Associates Annual Awards, Los Angeles: Award of Merit, 1965
 37th Academy Awards, Los Angeles: Nominee: Best Short Subject – Cartoons, 1965

Canon (1964)
 Montreal International Film Festival, Montreal: First Prize, Best Animated Film, 1965
 3rd International Film Festival of India, New Delhi: Bronze Peacock, Second Prize, 1965
 17th Canadian Film Awards, Toronto: Genie Award for Best Film, Arts and Experimental, 1965

The Animal Movie (1966)
 Venice Film Festival, Venice: Second Prize, Plaque of the Lion of St. Mark, 1966
 La Plata International Children's Film Festival, La Plata, Argentina: Silver Oak Leaf, First Prize, 1967
 Zlín Film Festival/International Film Festival for Children and Youth, Gottwaldov, Czechoslovakia: CIDALC First Prize 1967

Toys (1966)
 La Plata International Children's Film Festival, La Plata, Argentina: Silver Medal, 1968

Ashes of Doom (1970)
 International Festival of Short Films, Philadelphia: Award for Exceptional Merit, 1971

Tour en l'air (1974)
 American Film and Video Festival, New York: Blue Ribbon, Performing Arts, 1975
 Melbourne Film Festival, Melbourne: Diploma of Merit, 1975

Animated Motion (1976)
 Athens International Film/Video Festival, Athens, Georgia: Special Merit Award, 1978

See You in the Funny Papers (1983)
 Athens International Film/Video Festival, Athens, Georgia: Special Merit Award, 1984

References

External links

  at the National Film Board of Canada
 Watch films by Grant Munro at NFB web site
 Making Movie History: Grant Munro (interview)

Officers of the Order of Canada
Canadian animators
Artists from Winnipeg
Film directors from Winnipeg
Canadian documentary film directors
1923 births
2017 deaths
National Film Board of Canada people
Stop motion animators


Sean Richard O'Pry (born July 5, 1989) is an American model. He began his modelling career in the year 2006 and has featured in numerous advertising campaigns and editorials. In 2015, O'Pry was included on Models.com's new 'Supers Men', 'Sexiest Men', and the 'Money Guys' lists. That same year, Vogue, ranked him fifth on the 'Top 10 Male Models of All Time'.

Early life
O'Pry reports having Irish and unspecified Native American heritage. He has an elder brother and a younger sister. He attended North Cobb High School. He played track and field, basketball, baseball, and football in high school.

Career
In 2006, 17-year-old O'Pry was scouted from his prom photos on MySpace.

Since then, O'Pry has been featured in numerous advertising campaigns and editorials for  Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren, Gianfranco Ferré, H&M, Massimo Dutti, Zara, Armani Jeans, Marc Jacobs, Emporio Armani, Lacoste, DSquared², American Eagle, Bottega Veneta, DKNY, Fendi, GQ, Dazed & Confused, V, Details, Barneys, Uniqlo, Bloomingdale's, Belstaff, D2, Arena, Diesel, Gap, JOOP! and Numéro Homme.

His runway credentials include opening Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy and Salvatore Ferragamo,  closing Moschino, Trussardi and Zegna, and both for Balmain. Other designers he has walked for include Roberto Cavalli, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Michael Kors, and Hermès. In November 2011, O'Pry was selected as the star of Viktor & Rolf's Spicebomb fragrance campaign.

O'Pry appeared in Madonna's music video "Girl Gone Wild". He also appeared in Taylor Swift's music video for her song "Blank Space", as her love interest.

Sean appeared on the June 26, 2016 episode "inauguration" on the HBO television show Veep playing a male intern.

Achievements
In 2008, O'Pry was named the world's eighth most successful male model by Forbes magazine. Only one year later, he had moved up to the #1 position on their list. As of September 2013, Models.com named O'Pry as the most successful male model in the world on their 'Top 50' list. As of 2014, he had held that position for two years.

In 2015, O'Pry was included on Models.com's new 'Supers Men', 'Sexiest Men', and the 'Money Guys' lists. That same year, Vogue, ranked him fifth on the 'Top 10 Male Models of All Time'.

References

External links

 Sean O'Pry at TheFashionisto.com

1989 births
Male models from Georgia (U.S. state)
Living people
People from Kennesaw, Georgia
American people of Irish descent
American people who self-identify as being of Native American descent


Roy Haggerty (22 March 1960 – 22 April 2018) was an English professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He played for St Helens, Barrow and Highfield who began his career playing as a  before later playing as a  forward.

Capped twice for Great Britain Haggerty was selected to go on the 1988 Great Britain Lions tour of Australasia but did not play in any Test matches.  He also appeared once for Lancashire in a game against Yorkshire.

Two of his sons Gareth Haggerty and Kurt Haggerty are also professional rugby league footballers.

Playing career

St Helens
Born in Thatto Heath, Haggerty played for local amateur side Pilkington Recs before he signed for St Helens as a teenager.  He made his first team début playing centre in a 31–20 defeat by Widnes in the John Player Trophy on 30 September 1979.

The first of his 115 tries for St Helens came on 9 October against Rochdale Hornets.

A constant presence in the St Helens side for 12 seasons, Haggerty made 363 appearances scoring 115 tries and kicking 20 drop goals. Among these appearances were two appearances in the final of the Lancashire Cup; the first a 16–0 defeat by Warrington in the 1982 competition, and the second in the 28–16 victory over Wigan in the 1984 final.

In the same season, 1984–85, Heggarty played in the Premiership final as St Helens beat Hull Kingston Rovers 36–16.

Another final appearance was in the 1987–88 John Player Special Trophy final where St Helens beat Leeds 15–14.

He made two appearances in the final of the Challenge Cup, both on the losing side.  The first was in the 1987 final at Wembley Stadium, London on Saturday 2 May 1987, a losing appearance as Halifax won the cup 19–18.  The second was in the 27–0 defeat by Wigan at Wembley on 29 April 1989.

In the early part of his career Haggerty played as a , but in 1984 St Helens signed Mal Meninga, considered at the time the best centre in the world.  When told of the move Haggerty reportedly said "where are they going to play him?", the answer was in Haggerty's place in the centres and Haggerty was moved into the forwards to play at  where he played for the rest of his career.

After a testimonial season in 1990, Haggerty left St Helens in 1991.

Post St Helens
After leaving St Helens, Haggerty played for two seasons for Barrow before joining Highfield in 1993. After a short spell with Highfield and another with Huddersfield, Haggerty retired at the end of the 1992–93 season.

Haggerty died from a blocked artery caused by coronary heart disease on 22 April 2018, aged 58.

International career
In 1987 Haggerty was selected to play for Great Britain in two test matches against France, he did not score in either game but Great Britain won both matches.  Haggerty was selected for the 1988 Great Britain tour to Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand and while he played in some of the representative matches he did not play in any of the test matches.

References

1960 births
2018 deaths
Barrow Raiders players
English rugby league players
Great Britain national rugby league team players
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The Alliterative Revival is a term adopted by literary historians to refer to the resurgence of poetry using the alliterative verse form in Middle English between c. 1350 and 1500. Alliterative verse was the traditional verse form of Old English poetry; the last known alliterative poem prior to the Revival was Layamon's Brut, which dates from around 1190.

Scholarly opinion has been divided on whether the Alliterative Revival represented a conscious revival of an old artistic tradition, or merely signified that despite the tradition continuing in some form between 1200 and 1350, no poems survived in written form. Major works of the Revival include William Langland's Piers Plowman, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and the works of the Gawain Poet: Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Cleanness, and Patience.

History of academic recognition of the Revival

It was not until the later 19th century that editors began to consider the problems caused by the chronology of surviving medieval alliterative verse. Although he offered no comment himself, the work of Walter William Skeat made it apparent to students for the first time that there was a gap during the 13th and 14th centuries when no verse was written using an alliterative stave. By 1889 the philologist ten Brink spoke of a "revival of alliterative poetry" in the later 14th century, and the term was in routine use by the early 20th century.

The concept was further developed by scholars such as Israel Gollancz, James R. Hulbert, and J. P. Oakden. Their work developed a regionally based, nativist formulation of alliterative poetry which argued it expressed selfconsciously 'English' and archaic modes, revived from previous centuries, in opposition to the modern French-influenced court poetry of the south and east of England.

While the arguments of Gollancz and early 20th century academics strongly supposed continuity between Old English verse forms and those of the Revival, academics of the 1960s and 70s increasingly began to stress the discontinuities in the forms, suggesting that 14th century alliterative verse was a purely new invention. Writers such as Elizabeth Salter, David Lawton and Thorlac Turville-Petre notably refused to hypothesise the existence of poetry that had not survived in the written record, preferring instead to seek possible inspiration for the Revival's poetry within rhythmic prose traditions of the 13th and 14th century.

Verse

Alliterative "long line"

The rules by which alliterative verse was composed in Middle English are unclear and have been the subject of much debate. No metrical rules were written down at the time, and their details were quickly forgotten once the form died out: Robert Crowley, in his 1550 printing of Piers Plowman, simply stated that each line had "thre wordes at the least [...] whiche beginne with some one letter", assuring readers that "this thinge noted, the miter shal be very plesaunt to read".

Verse of the Alliterative Revival broadly adheres to the same pattern shown in Old English poetry; a four-stress line, with a rhythmic pause (or caesura) in the middle, in which three of the stresses alliterate, i.e. aa / ax. However, there are very significant differences. Amongst the features differentiating the Middle English alliterative style from its predecessor is that the lines are longer and looser in rhythm, and the medial pause is less strictly observed, or often absent entirely; hundreds of rhythmic variations seem to have been permitted. While Old English poetry generally employed a clear syntactic break in the middle of the line, in Middle English the line is generally a complete syntactic unit: some poets composed sentences extending over several lines. An example of this style is shown by a few lines from Wynnere and Wastoure:

(19-23)

There has been much debate on the subject of how lines containing more than two alliterating syllables before the medial pause, which are common in verse of the Revival, should be read. While some scholars have described these additional syllables as a "minor chief syllable" or as having "secondary stress", they have also been interpreted as not altering the four-stress pattern while still contributing to the effect of the line. Some of the most recent analysis proposes that the traditional four-stress model of both Old English and Middle English alliterative verse is a "misapprehension" and that a focus on other apparent rules clarifies the evolution of the form, with Layamon's Brut emerging as a key text in the development of alliterative verse.

Stanzaic poems

A second type of verse combining rhymed stanzas, usually of thirteen or occasionally fourteen lines, with the basic four-stress line also appeared during the Revival: it appears to have been a new development of the 14th century. Here the alliteration may often follow the pattern aa / aa, ax / aa, or even aa / bb, though lines with four alliterating words are much more common than in verse using the unrhymed long line.

Mirroring uncertainty over the evolution of alliterative verse in general, it is still uncertain as to whether this tradition developed from the unrhymed alliterative template or from rhymed verse forms on which the traditional alliterative stave was superimposed. While the poems in the thirteen-line stanza have generally been considered a part of the alliterative tradition, they have also been argued to be a related but distinct offshoot, incorporating elements of rhythm and metre that are in direct conflict with the conventions of unrhymed alliterative verse.

The surviving stanzaic alliterative poems are generally of northern English provenance; some, such as Somer Soneday or The Three Dead Kings, are of very complex form.

Development of the Revival

The dialects shown in the surviving poems often point towards a northern and western provenance. The traditional interpretation of the Revival argues that such verse first began to be produced in the south-west Midlands, perhaps towards the start of the 14th century, and spread gradually northwards and eastwards, eventually becoming limited to the far north and Scotland by the close of the 15th century. This view suggests that the Revival was a largely self-contained movement whose "contacts with the metropolitan, Chaucerian tradition were slight". The words of the Parson in the prologue to Chaucer's Parson's Tale, that as a "Southren man" he cannot recite alliterative verse - "I kan nat geeste 'rum, ram, ruf' by lettre" - have often been taken as supporting evidence that alliterative verse was associated only with the north of the country.

In more recent years medievalists have begun to challenge the idea that alliterative verse and its "revival" was an exclusively regional phenomenon, limited to the north and west of England. Although, as academic Ralph Hanna observes, the records of early alliterative poetry cluster overwhelmingly around the literary communities of Worcester, in the west, and York, in the north, alliterative poetry at least subsequently developed "as one competing form of a national, not regional, literature". This view interprets alliterative verse as part of the common literary culture of the time: although it was most appreciated in the rural north-west, several poems seem to have a definitely eastern (and in the case of The Blacksmiths, possibly urban) origin. The apparent flowering of the alliterative style in the period may have been due to social changes occurring in the wake of the Black Death, which would have thrown vernacular literary styles into greater prominence, or may simply be the result of the fact that the fifteenth century saw a general uptick in the amount of English-language literature being composed and copied.

Ultimately, changing literary fashions, along with its perhaps old-fashioned and provincial associations, led to the abandonment of the alliterative form. Its use persisted in Scotland long after it had become a curiosity in an English literary culture totally dominated by the Chaucerian tradition: from 1450 until the following century, every major Scots court poet composed at least one alliterative poem. It is likely that the move of the court of James VI and I from Edinburgh to London in 1603 finally broke the continuous tradition of alliterative metre: its compositional rules were soon forgotten, following which it became "as inaccessible as a dead language".

Audience and authors

The cultural milieu of the alliterative poets is often described as one more provincial and backward-looking than that of Chaucerian, courtly poetry of the time, with the poems being appreciated by an audience drawn from the landed gentry of the shires rather than the urban sophisticates of the court. The Arthurian subjects of many Revival poems have sometimes been taken as evidence of the movement's provincial or antiquarian character or even of a form of English nationalism. Most of the authors use language closer to the vernacular, use archaic or dialect terms, and structure their work as if to be read aloud to a mixed group of listeners. A more recent interpretation suggests that these qualities are due to alliterative poetry's status as a popular mode closer to the vernacular, or to its tendency to preserve older linguistic forms through poetic formula and convention, rather than resulting from conscious antiquarianism or cultural chauvinism.

Several academics, beginning with James Hulbert, have suggested that the Revival's poets could have had a more noble audience, and were part of a conscious regional identity encouraged by powerful northern and western magnates – the Mortimer Earls of March, the Bohun Earls of Hereford and the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick – as a political counterweight to the court. However, as Richard II of England and John of Gaunt both had substantial support and connections in the north-west, it is equally possible to argue that the alliterative poets of this period could easily have had courtly connections.

In comparison to some of the authors of syllabic rhymed verse during this period, such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and John Lydgate, almost nothing is known about the authors of alliterative poetry. The greatest of them, the Gawain Poet, author of Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and that of Alliterative Morte Arthure are both completely anonymous, though the former has been tentatively identified as a John Massey, member of a Cheshire landowning family. Even William Langland, the author of the hugely influential Piers Plowman, has been identified largely through conjecture. The longest poem of the Revival (over 14,000 lines), The Destruction of Troy, is ascribed to a John Clerk from Lancashire, but little else is known about him. A notable exception to this lack of information is Scottish court poet William Dunbar; Dunbar generally wrote in syllabic metres, but displays a masterful use of the alliterative line in one poem at the very end of the period.

One man known to have appreciated alliterative verse during the time it was still being composed was Robert Thornton, a 15th-century landowner from North Yorkshire. Thornton's efforts in copying these poems, for the use of himself and his family, resulted in the preservation of several valuable works.

Chronology

The first alliterative poem after the Brut for which a date can be established is Wynnere and Wastoure, which from internal evidence is usually dated to around 1352, though the Alexander A and B fragments have been suggested to be as early as 1340. The last, Scottish Ffielde, was composed in c. 1515. From in between these dates, a number of examples of verse have survived, of which some are listed below:

c. 1352
Wynnere and Wastoure, unrhymed allegorical debate (anonymous; dialect appears to point to a poet from north Cheshire)
c. 1360, perhaps revised until the 1390s
Piers Plowman, very long allegorical and satirical dream vision (author conjecturally identified as William Langland, west or southwest Midland  dialect)
c. 1365, though later 14th century also suggested
 The Alliterative Morte Arthure, unrhymed Arthurian romance (anonymous; probable dialect of east Midlands)
c. 1370
The Parlement of the Thre Ages, unrhymed allegorical poem (anonymous, Midland dialect; some commentators have argued it may be written by the author of Wynnere and Wastoure)
The Siege of Jerusalem, religious-historical narrative (anonymous, Lancashire dialect; ca. 1370-1380 vengeance narrative that describes the Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE))
c. 1380 (works attributed to the Gawain Poet)
Pearl, allegorical poem in rhymed stanza (anonymous; dialect of the Gawain Poet, sometimes identified as a John Massey, is of Cheshire / Staffordshire)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Arthurian romance in unrhymed stanza with rhymed bob and wheel (anonymous; generally considered to be the work of the Gawain Poet, above)
Cleanness, homiletic poem in unrhymed verse (anonymous; generally considered to be the work of the Gawain Poet, above)
Patience, homiletic poem in unrhymed verse (anonymous; generally considered to be the work of the Gawain Poet, above)
c. 1385
The Destruction of Troy, historical narrative by John Clerk of Whalley, Lancashire
1386
St. Erkenwald, saint's life / exemplum in unrhymed verse (anonymous; similar dialect to Gawain Poet has led to suggestion it may also be by this author)
c. 1390
The Pistel of Swete Susan, biblical story in thirteen-line stanza (anonymous, south Yorkshire dialect; sometimes attributed to a "Huchoun", or "Hugh")
c. 1400
The Three Dead Kings, moral poem in thirteen-line stanza that has been called the most technically complex in the language (anonymous; sometimes attributed to John Audelay)
Pater Noster, religious poem in rhymed alliterative stanza (anonymous; also possibly by Audelay)
c. 1420
The Awntyrs off Arthure, Arthurian romance in thirteen-line stanza (anonymous; probably written by a native of Cumberland)
c. 1425
The Blacksmiths, satirical complaint against the noise made by blacksmiths (anonymous; East Anglian or even London dialect)
c. 1450
The Buke of the Howlat, Scottish allegorical poem in rhymed stanza with irregular alliteration; written by Richard Holland
c. 1500
The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, satirical chanson d'aventure in unrhymed long line; written by Scottish poet William Dunbar
c. 1515
Scottish Ffielde; anonymous poem about the Battle of Flodden, composed for the  Stanley family.

Some elements of the alliterative technique survived in Scotland until the late 16th century, appearing in The Flyting Betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart dated around 1580.

References

Middle English literature


The Oregon and Transcontinental Company was a 19th-century holding company in the United States, organized by Henry Villard in 1881 to control the Northern Pacific Railroad and Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. It was incorporated in Oregon. New Jersey passed legislation in 1889 to facilitate the control of other companies by another corporation with a goal of encouraging trusts to convert into holding companies and relocate to that state. Oregon and Transcontinental in 1890 re-incorporated as a holding company in New Jersey and became the North American Company so that it could take advantage of these expanded corporate powers and invest in a wider range of businesses.

References

Companies based in New Jersey
Holding companies of the United States
History of transportation in Oregon
Northern Pacific Railway subsidiaries
American companies established in 1881
1881 establishments in Oregon


Sumnerville is an unincorporated community in Ottawa County, Kansas, United States.  It is located north of Minneapolis.

History
A post office was opened in Sumnerville in 1867, and remained in operation until it was discontinued in 1895.

Education
The community is served by North Ottawa County USD 239 public school district.

References

Further reading

External links
 Ottawa County maps: Current, Historic, KDOT

Unincorporated communities in Kansas
Unincorporated communities in Ottawa County, Kansas


Live My Life is the third studio album by Boris. It was released at 30 January 2009, on the Bo-Rush / Upper Room label, and distributed by Rough Trade Benelux. Main producer is Antoon Tolsma (DutchFlower). The preliminary single "If You Wanna Roll with Me" has been released on 7 November 2008.

The album reached the charts with a number 4 entry during the first week in the Dutch Album Top 100.

Track listing
All songs were written by Boris Titulaer and Anthony Tolsma, except where noted.
"Bubblin'" – 2:54
"Everything About You" – 3:12
"If You Wanna Roll With Me" – 2:26
"Stupid Again" – 3:32
"Live My Life" (Titulaer, Tolsma, B. Tam) – 3:19
"One World" – 3:17
"Loosen Up" – 4:30
"I'm Sorry" – 3:12
"Leave it Alone" (Titulaer, Marcus Machado, Micheal Johnson) – 4:36
"The Ohhhh Song" – 3:44
"I Want You to Know" (Titulaer, Machado, Johnson) – 4:36
"Do You Love Me" (Titulaer, Machado) – 4:59 (+ hidden track – One World (Acoustic))

References

Boris Titulaer albums
2009 albums


Journey into Fear is a 1975 Canadian thriller film directed by Daniel Mann, and based on the 1940 novel of the same name by Eric Ambler.

It stars Sam Waterston, Zero Mostel, Yvette Mimieux, Vincent Price, Donald Pleasence, Shelley Winters, Stanley Holloway, Joseph Wiseman and Ian McShane.

The film is a remake of Journey into Fear, a 1943 version of the novel starring Orson Welles.

Plot
U.S. geologist Graham (Sam Waterston) discovers a rich oil deposit in the mountains of Turkey that creates a dangerous conflict between Turks and Arabs interests.

His life suddenly in peril, Graham tries to escape aboard a boat with the assistance of a Mr. Kupelkin of the Turkish embassy. The passengers he encounters include a singer, Josette, who may also be a prostitute; and a bickering couple, Mr. and Mrs. Mathews. All the while, Graham becomes aware that someone on board is determined to kill him.

Cast
 Sam Waterston as Graham
 Zero Mostel as Kupelkin
 Yvette Mimieux as Josette
 Scott Marlowe as Jose
 Ian McShane as Banat
 Vincent Price as Dervos
 Donald Pleasence as Kuvelti
 Shelley Winters as Mrs. Mathews
 Stanley Holloway as Mr. Mathews
 Jackie Cooper as Hurst
 Joseph Wiseman as Col. Haki

Critical reception
TV Guide wrote, "this version was shot all over Europe with well-known guest artists who ought to have known better, and directed by Mann who has done much better."

Influence
"Journey into Fear: Pilot's Quarters 1 and 2" (2001), an art installation by Stan Douglas "was inspired by the 1975 Daniel Mann film Journey into Fear," writes Rachel Taylor on the Tate website, "one of the first major films to be shot on location in Vancouver. Mann’s film a remake of the 1942 film of the same name directed by Norman Foster, which was based on the 1940 novel by Eric Ambler.
Douglas’ video, like the two Hollywood films, is set on a container ship. Two characters based on Graham and Möller discuss and argue; Möller tries to convince Graham to delay a container en route to Vancouver, an act that would destabilize shares in a particular Asian contractor, leaving the company's shares vulnerable to an aggressive takeover. These scenes, which form the majority of the video, take place in the ship's pilots quarters.
The diptych presents views of the sets used for filming these scenes. Both photographs show the sets from a distance, exposing the sound stage in which they are situated. The sets are empty of people but lights and microphones are visible. Both images show the cabin with a ‘fourth wall’ removed to allow filming take place. In Pilot's Quarters 2 the cabin is seen from behind the pilot's bed, while in Pilot's Quarters 1 the bed is seen on the left side of the room.
Douglas’ practice has always included photography as a source and inspiration for his filmmaking as well as an art form in itself. The large scale images of the set serve to highlight the artifice of filmmaking, laying bare the techniques involved in film-making."

References

External links

1975 films
Canadian thriller films
1970s thriller films
English-language Canadian films
Films scored by Alex North
Films based on British novels
Films directed by Daniel Mann
Films set in Turkey
Remakes of American films
1970s English-language films
1970s Canadian films


Jessica Renee Holmes (born November 17, 1976) is an American television personality. She was the co-host of the popular Nickelodeon TV series Slime Time Live. She is currently a morning news anchor of the KTLA Morning News in Los Angeles.

Career
Jessica Holmes was an intern for Nickelodeon in 1999 when she was approached by a producer in a hallway at the network and was asked if she would like to appear on air. She agreed and six months later she began co-hosting the show Slime Time Live. Slime Time Live ran for eight seasons between 2000 and 2004.

In 2003, Holmes was hired to host Bragging Rights for the OLN cable network (formerly Outdoor Life Network). Bragging Rights was a 13-episode reality television show and Holmes served as the host.

Following her brief stint on OLN, Holmes decided to relocate to Los Angeles to further her television career. At the time of her move she did not have a new job. Her agent submitted an application for Holmes to appear in a KTLA Morning News competition called "The Audition". "The Audition" was a segment on the KTLA Morning News that was a game show competition. The winner of the competition was reportedly going to be the new weathercaster on the show. Holmes won the competition which was determined by viewer votes.

After winning the competition at KTLA Morning News, Holmes began doing weather segments on the show. A month later, Holmes was hired as a helicopter-based traffic reporter for the show. After two years of reporting traffic, Holmes was tapped to co-host a new 9 am news show. Holmes later expanded her duties to include co-hosting the 7 am KTLA Morning News broadcast, replacing Michaela Pereira. In addition, she regularly hosts the preshows for the Primetime Emmy Awards as well as the Oscars.

Personal life
Holmes lives in Los Angeles and is married to Arie Solomon. She gave birth to a son, Levi, on October 8, 2015. Holmes gave birth to her second child, Theo, on May 3, 2022.

References

External links

 Talent Bio, KTLA Website

1976 births
Journalists from Ohio
Living people
Television anchors from Los Angeles
Television personalities from Cleveland
University of Central Florida alumni