# Roman Death Gods-differences?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-death-gods-differences/370517>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 28, 2006, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-death-gods-differences/370517 "2006-08-28T13:56:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2006, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-death-gods-differences/370517/1 "2006-08-28T13:56:17Z")

</div>

The Roman religion seems to have had three gods of the dead…Pluto, Dis (Dispater), and Orcus. Does anyone know what the differences were between these three and what they represented?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2006, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roman-death-gods-differences/370517/2 "2006-08-28T15:51:31Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]  
The Roman religion seems to have had three gods of the dead…Pluto, Dis (Dispater), and Orcus. Does anyone know what the differences were between these three and what they represented?  
[/QUOTE]

The older Roman Religion is more animistic than the anthropomorphic Greek gods; the gods were more about notions of divine power–_numen_ is the word in Latin–rather than the _deus_ concept borrowed from the Greeks.

_Pluto_ as a name for the god of the dead in Roman religion is borrowed directly from the Greek word for “wealth”. _Dis (Dispater)_ is most likely a shortened form of _Dives Pater_; wealth was often associated with the realm of the dead in the ancient world. Could also be short for _Deus pater_, the root for name _Juppiter_.

_Orcus_ is primarily the place of the underworld rather than the god that rules there. [The L&S entry at Perseus](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2332931&layout.reflookup=Orcus&layout.reflang=la) tells us this is akin to Greek _herkos_ - “fence, wall” and the Latin _urgeo_ - “compell, hem-in”. Certainly by the time of Plautus–when applied to the god–it was simply an alternate name for _Pluto_.