Hmm, Orcus.
90482 Orcus is a large
Kuiper Belt object (KBO) with a large
companion and is likely a
dwarf planet. The
discovery images of this object were acquired on February 17, 2004 by
Michael Brown of
Caltech,
Chad Trujillo of the
Gemini Observatory, and
David Rabinowitz of
Yale University.
Precovery images as early as November 8, 1951 were later identified.
[1]
Orcus was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Italic and
Roman mythology. He was more equivalent to the Roman
Pluto than to the Greek
Hades, and later identified with
Dis Pater. He was portrayed in paintings in Etruscan tombs as a hairy, bearded giant. A temple to Orcus may have existed on the
Palatine Hill in
Rome. It is likely that he was transliterated from the Greek
daemon Horcus, the personification of Oaths and a son of
Eris.[
citation neededOrcus was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Italic and Roman mythology. He was more equivalent to the Roman Pluto than to the Greek Hades, and later identified with Dis Pater. He was portrayed in paintings in Etruscan tombs as a hairy, bearded giant. A temple to Orcus may have existed on the Palatine Hill in Rome. It is likely that he was transliterated from the Greek daemon Horcus, the personification of Oaths and a son of Eris.[citation needed]OriginsThe origins of Orcus may have lain in
Etruscan religion. Orcus was a name used by Roman writers to identify a
Gaulish god of the underworld. The so-called
Tomb of Orcus, an Etruscan site at
Tarquinia, is a misnomer, resulting from its first discoverers mistaking as Orcus a hairy, bearded giant that was actually a figure of a
Cyclops.
The
Romans sometimes conflated Orcus with other gods such as Pluto, Hades,
and Dis Pater, god of the land of the dead. The name "Orcus" seems to
have been given to his evil and punishing side, as the god who
tormented evildoers in the afterlife. Like the name Hades (or the Norse
Hel, for that matter), "
Orcus" could also mean the land of the dead. 
Orcus was chiefly worshipped in rural areas; he had no official cult in the cities.
[1]This remoteness allowed for him to survive in the countryside long
after the more prevalent gods had ceased to be worshipped. He survived
as a folk figure into the
Middle Ages, and aspects of his worship were transmuted into the
wild man festivals held in rural parts of Europe through modern times.
[1] Indeed, much of what is known about the celebrations associated with Orcus come from medieval sources.
[1]Survival and later useFrom
Orcus' association with death and the underworld, his name came to be
used for demons and other underworld monsters, particularly in Italian
where
orco refers to a kind of monster found in fairy-tales that feeds on human flesh. The French word
ogre (appearing first in
Charles Perrault's fairy-tales) may have come from variant forms of this word,
orgo or
ogro; in any case, the French
ogre and the Italian
orco are exactly the same sort of creature. An early example of an
orco appears in
Ludovico Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso, as a bestial, blind, tusk-faced monster inspired by the
Cyclops of the
Odyssey; this
orco should not be confused with the
orca, a sea-monster also appearing in Ariosto.
This
orco was the inspiration to
J. R. R. Tolkien's
orcs in his
The Lord of the Rings. In a text published in
The War of the Jewels, Tolkien stated:
Note. The word used in translation of Q urko, S orch, is Orc.
<blockquote>But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc, 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is
possibly no connexion between them.
The English word is now generally supposed to be derived from Latin Orcus.
</blockquote>Also, in an unpublished letter sent to
Gene Wolfe, Tolkien also made this comment:
[2]
Orc
I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning demon, usually supposed to
be derived from the Latin Orcus -- Hell. But I doubt this,though the
matter is too involved to set out here.From this use, countless other
fantasy games and works of fiction have borrowed the concept of the orc.
