Orcus 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
Charon's obol "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 , 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