The Acheron (/ˈækərən/ or /ˈækərɒn/; Ancient Greek: Ἀχέρων Acheron or Ἀχερούσιος Acherousios; Greek: Αχέροντας Acherontas) is a river in the Epirus region of northwest Greece.
In Greek mythology, Acheron is often depicted as the entrance to the Greek Underworld where souls must be ferried across by Charon (although some later sources, such as Roman poets, assign this role to the river Styx).
Chameria (also spelled Çameria; Albanian: Çamëria; Greek: Τσαμουριά, romanized: Tsamouriá) is a historical region along the coast of the Ionian Sea in southwestern Albania and northwestern Greece, traditionally associated with the Albanian ethnic subgroup of the Chams. For a brief period (1909-1912), three kazas (Filat, Aydonat and Margiliç) were combined by the Ottomans into an administrative district called Çamlik sancak. During the interwar period, the toponym was in common use and the official name of the area above the Acheron river in all Greek state documents. The term is used today mostly by Albanians and it is obsolete in Greek, surviving in some old folk songs. Most of what is called Chameria is divided between parts of the Greek regional units of Thesprotia, Preveza, and Ioannina (some villages at the western side); and the municipality of Konispol at the southernmost extremity of Albania. Apart from geographic and ethnographic usages, in contemporary times within Albania the toponym has also acquired irredentist connotations.
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (/ˈkɛərɒn, -ən/ KAIR-on, -ən; Ancient Greek: Χάρων Ancient Greek pronunciation: [kʰá.rɔːn]) is a psychopomp God, the ferryman of the Greek underworld. He carries the souls of those who have been given funeral rites across the rivers Acheron and Styx, which separate the worlds of the living and the dead. Archaeology confirms that, in some burials, low-value coins known generically as Charon's obols were placed in, on, or near the mouth of the deceased, or next to the cremation urn containing the ashes. This has been taken to confirm that at least some aspects of Charon's mytheme are reflected in some Greek and Roman funeral practices, or else the coins function as a viaticum for the soul's journey. In Virgil's epic poem, Aeneid, the dead who could not pay the fee, and those who had received no funeral rites, had to wander the near shores of the Styx for one hundred years before they were allowed to cross the river. Charon also ferried the living mortals Heracles and Aeneas to the underworld and back again.
The name Ascalaphus (/əˈskæləfəs/; Ancient Greek: Ἀσκάλαφος Askalaphos) is shared by two people in Greek mythology:
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Cichyrus (Ancient Greek: Κίχυρος, Kichyros), earlier called Ephyra (Ἐφύρα or Ἐφύρη), was the capital of ancient Thesprotia, according to the myth built by the Arcadian leader Thesprotos. Thucydides describes it as situated in the district Elaeatis in Thesprotia, away from the sea. At its site is the famous Necromanteion (Νεκρομαντεῖον, "Oracle of the Dead"). First settled during the Bronze Age and resettled in the 14th century BC by colonists most probably from Chaonia and the west Peloponnese region, the city is about 800 m north of the junction of the Kokytos River with the Acheron, and about 4.5 km east of the bay of Ammoudia. Near it was the outlet into the sea of the Acherusian Lake. Strabo (7.7.5) gives the same information and adds that in his time Ephyra was called Kichyros. The name had been changed from Ephyra back to the more ancient name about 200 years earlier.