Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Kuiper belt
The Kuiper belt called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune to 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed of frozen volatiles, such as methane and water; the Kuiper belt is home to three recognized dwarf planets: Pluto and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region; the Kuiper belt was named after Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, though he did not predict its existence. In 1992, Albion was discovered, the first Kuiper belt object since Charon. Since its discovery, the number of known KBOs has increased to over a thousand, more than 100,000 KBOs over 100 km in diameter are thought to exist.
The Kuiper belt was thought to be the main repository for periodic comets, those with orbits lasting less than 200 years. Studies since the mid-1990s have shown that the belt is dynamically stable and that comets' true place of origin is the scattered disc, a dynamically active zone created by the outward motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago. The Kuiper belt is distinct from the theoretical Oort cloud, a thousand times more distant and is spherical; the objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects. Pluto is the largest and most massive member of the Kuiper belt, the largest and the second-most-massive known TNO, surpassed only by Eris in the scattered disc. Considered a planet, Pluto's status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, it is compositionally similar to many other objects of the Kuiper belt and its orbital period is characteristic of a class of KBOs, known as "plutinos", that share the same 2:3 resonance with Neptune.
After the discovery of Pluto in 1930, many speculated. The region now called, it was only in 1992. The number and variety of prior speculations on the nature of the Kuiper belt have led to continued uncertainty as to who deserves credit for first proposing it; the first astronomer to suggest the existence of a trans-Neptunian population was Frederick C. Leonard. Soon after Pluto's discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Leonard pondered whether it was "not that in Pluto there has come to light the first of a series of ultra-Neptunian bodies, the remaining members of which still await discovery but which are destined to be detected"; that same year, astronomer Armin O. Leuschner suggested that Pluto "may be one of many long-period planetary objects yet to be discovered." In 1943, in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Kenneth Edgeworth hypothesized that, in the region beyond Neptune, the material within the primordial solar nebula was too spaced to condense into planets, so rather condensed into a myriad of smaller bodies.
From this he concluded that "the outer region of the solar system, beyond the orbits of the planets, is occupied by a large number of comparatively small bodies" and that, from time to time, one of their number "wanders from its own sphere and appears as an occasional visitor to the inner solar system", becoming a comet. In 1951, in a paper in Astrophysics: A Topical Symposium, Gerard Kuiper speculated on a similar disc having formed early in the Solar System's evolution, but he did not think that such a belt still existed today. Kuiper was operating on the assumption, common in his time, that Pluto was the size of Earth and had therefore scattered these bodies out toward the Oort cloud or out of the Solar System. Were Kuiper's hypothesis correct, there would not be a Kuiper belt today; the hypothesis took many other forms in the following decades. In 1962, physicist Al G. W. Cameron postulated the existence of "a tremendous mass of small material on the outskirts of the solar system". In 1964, Fred Whipple, who popularised the famous "dirty snowball" hypothesis for cometary structure, thought that a "comet belt" might be massive enough to cause the purported discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus that had sparked the search for Planet X, or, at the least, massive enough to affect the orbits of known comets.
Observation ruled out this hypothesis. In 1977, Charles Kowal discovered 2060 Chiron, an icy planetoid with an orbit between Saturn and Uranus, he used a blink comparator, the same device that had allowed Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto nearly 50 years before. In 1992, another object, 5145 Pholus, was discovered in a similar orbit. Today, an entire population of comet-like bodies, called the centaurs, is known to exist in the region between Jupiter and Neptune; the centaurs' orbits have dynamical lifetimes of a few million years. From the time of Chiron's discovery in 1977, astronomers have speculated that the centaurs therefore must be replenished by some outer reservoir. Further evidence for the existence of the Kuiper belt emerged from the study of comets; that comets have finite lifespans. As they approach the Sun, its heat causes their volatile surfaces to sublimate into space d
Ludovico Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso; the poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions into many sideplots. Ariosto composed the poem in the ottava rima rhyme scheme and introduced narrative commentary throughout the work. Ariosto coined the term "humanism" for choosing to focus upon the strengths and potential of humanity, rather than only upon its role as subordinate to God; this led to Renaissance humanism. Ariosto was born in Reggio nell’Emilia, where his father Niccolò Ariosto was commander of the citadel, he was the oldest of 10 children and was seen as the successor to the patriarchal position of his family. From his earliest years, Ludovico was interested in poetry, but he was obliged by his father to study law. After five years of law, Ariosto was allowed to read classics under Gregorio da Spoleto.
Ariosto's studies of Greek and Latin literature were cut short by Spoleto's move to France to tutor Francesco Sforza. Shortly after this, Ariosto's father died. After the death of his father, Ludovico Ariosto was compelled to forgo his literary occupations and take care of his family, whose affairs were in disarray. Despite his family obligations, Ariosto managed to write some comedies in prose as well as lyrical pieces; some of these attracted the notice of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, who took the young poet under his patronage and appointed him one of the gentlemen of his household. Este compensated Ariosto poorly for his efforts. Ariosto said that the cardinal was ungrateful, that he deplored the time which he spent under his yoke, that if he received some small pension, it was not to reward him for his poetry – which the prelate despised – but for acting as a messenger. Ludovico Ariosto and Leonardo da Vinci shared a patron in Cardinal Ippolito d'Este's older sister the Marchioness Isabella d’Este, the "First Lady of the Renaissance."
Isabella d'Este appears in Orlando Furioso. She appears in Leonardo's, "Sketch for a Portrait of Isabella d’Este," at the Louvre. "A statue no less jocund, no less bright,/ Succeeds, on the writing is impressed. Hercules’ daughter, Isabella hight,/ In whom Ferrara deems city blest,/ Much more because she first shall see the light/ Within its circuit, than for all the rest/ Which kind and favouring Fortune in the flow/ Of rolling years, shall on that town bestow." Orlando Furioso, Canto XLII. The cardinal went to Hungary in 1518, wished Ariosto to accompany him; the poet excused himself, pleading ill health, his love of study, the need to care for his elderly mother. His excuses were not well-received, he was denied an interview. Ariosto and d'Este got into a heated argument, Ariosto was promptly dismissed from service; the cardinal's brother, duke of Ferrara, now took Ariosto under his patronage. By Ariosto had distinguished himself as a diplomat, chiefly on the occasion of two visits to Rome as ambassador to Pope Julius II.
The fatigue of one of these journeys brought on an illness from which he never recovered, on his second mission he was nearly killed by order of the Pope, who happened at the time to be in conflict with Alfonso. On account of the war, his salary of 84 crowns a year was suspended, it was withdrawn altogether after the peace; because of this, Ariosto asked the duke either to provide for him, or to allow him to seek employment elsewhere. He was appointed to the province of Garfagnana without a governor, situated on the Apennines, an appointment he held for three years; the province was distracted by factions and bandits, the governor had not the requisite means to enforce his authority and the duke did little to support his minister. Ariosto's government satisfied both the people given over to his care, however. In 1508 Ariosto's play Cassaria appeared, the next year I suppositi was first acted in Ferrara and ten years in the Vatican. A prose edition was published in Rome in 1524, the first verse edition was published at Venice in 1551.
The play was translated by George Gascoigne and acted at Grays Inn in London in 1566 and published in 1573, used by Shakespeare as a source for The Taming of the Shrew. In 1516, the first version of the Orlando Furioso in 40 cantos, was published at Ferrara; the third and final version of the Orlando Furioso, in 46 cantos, appeared on 8 September 1532. Throughout Ariosto's writing are narratorial comments dubbed by Dr. Daniel Javitch as "Cantus Interruptus". Javitch's term refers to Ariosto's narrative technique to break off one plot line in the middle of a canto, only to pick it up again in another much canto. Javitch argues that while many critics have assumed Ariosto does this so as to build narrative tension and keep the reader turning pages, the poet in reality defuses narrative tension because so much time separates the interruption and the resumption. By the time the reader gets to the continuation of the story, he or she has forgotten or ceased to care about the plot and is wrapped up in another plot.
Ariosto does this, Javitch argues, to undermine "man's foolish but persistent desire for
Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Maryland, United States, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th century; the Museum's collection was amassed by major American art and sculpture collectors, a father and son: William Thompson Walters, who began serious collecting when he moved to Paris as a nominal Southern/Confederate sympathizer at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. After allowing the Baltimore public to view his father's and his growing added collections at his West Mount Vernon Place townhouse/mansion during the late 1800s, he arranged for an elaborate stone palazzo-styled structure built for that purpose in 1905–1909. Located across the back alley, a block south of the Walters mansion on West Monument Street/Mount Vernon Place, on the northwest corner of North Charles Street at West Centre Street; the mansion and gallery were just south and west of the landmark Washington Monument in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood, just north of the downtown business district and northeast of Cathedral Hill.
Upon his 1931 death, Henry Walters bequeathed the entire collection of more than 22,000 works, the original Charles Street Gallery building, his adjacent townhouse/mansion just across the alley to the north on West Mount Vernon Place to the City of Baltimore, "for the benefit of the public." The collection includes masterworks of ancient Egypt, Greek sculpture and Roman sarcophagi, medieval ivories, illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance bronzes, Old Master European and 19th-century paintings, Chinese ceramics and bronzes, Art Deco jewelry, ancient Near East, Mesopotamian, or ancient Middle East items. In 2000, "The Walters Art Gallery" changed its long-time name to "The Walters Art Museum" to reflect its image as a large public institution and eliminate confusion among some of the increasing out-of-state visitors; the following year, "The Walters" reopened its original main building after a dramatic three-year physical renovation and replacement of internal utilities and infrastructure. The Archimedes Palimpsest was on loan to the Walters Art Museum from a private collector for conservation and spectral imaging studies.
Starting on October 1, 2006, the museum began having free admission year-round as a result of substantial grants given by Baltimore City and the surrounding suburban Baltimore County arts agencies and authorities. In 2012, "The Walters" released nearly 20,000 of its own images of its collections on a Creative Commons license, collaborated in their upload to the world-wide web and the internet on Wikimedia Commons; this was one of the most comprehensive such releases made by any museum. The Walters' collection of ancient art includes examples from Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East. Highlights include two monumental 3,000-pound statues of the Egyptian lion-headed fire goddess Sekhmet. In 1911, Henry Walters purchased 100 gold artifacts from the Chiriqui region of western Panama in Central America, creating a core collection of ancient American native art. Through subsequent gifts of art and loans, the museum has added works in pottery and stone, from Mexico, Central America and South America, including pieces from the Mesoamerican Olmec and Maya cultures, as well as the Moche and Inca peoples of South America.
Highlights of the Asian art collection assembled earlier by Baltimorean father and son collectors William T. and Henry Walters include Japanese arms and armor, Chinese and Japanese porcelains and metalwork. Among the museum's outstanding works of Asian art is a late-12th- or early-13th-century Cambodian bronze of the eight-armed Avalokiteshvara, a T'ang Dynasty earthenware camel, an intricately painted Ming Dynasty wine jar; the museum owns the oldest surviving Chinese wood-and-lacquer image of the Buddha. It is exhibited in a gallery dedicated to this work; the museum holds one of the largest and finest collections of Thai bronze and banner paintings in the world. Islamic art in all media is represented at the Walters. Among the highlights are a 7th-century carved and hammered silver bowl from Iran,; the Walters Museum owns an array of Islamic manuscripts. These include a 15th-century Koran from northern India, executed at the height of the Timurid Empire. Walters Art Museum, MS W.613 contains five Mughal miniatures from an important "Khamsa of Nizami" made for the Emperor Akbar.
Henry Walters assembled a collection of art produced
Dīs Pater
Dīs Pater was a Roman god of the underworld. Dis was associated with fertile agricultural land and mineral wealth, since those minerals came from underground, he was equated with the chthonic deities Pluto and Orcus. Dīs Pater was shortened to Dīs and this name has since become an alternative name for the underworld or a part of the underworld, such as the City of Dis of Dante's The Divine Comedy, which comprises Lower Hell, it is thought that Dīs Pater was a Celtic god. This confusion arises from the second-hand citation of one of Julius Caesar's comments in his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, where he says that the Gauls all claimed descent from Dīs Pater. However, Caesar's remark is a clear example of interpretatio Romana: what Caesar meant was that the Gauls all claimed descent from a Gaulish god that reminded him of the Roman Dīs Pater, a scholia on the Pharsalia equates Dis Pater with Taranis, the chief sky deity in the Gaulish religion. Different possible candidates exist for this role in Celtic religion, such as Gaulish Sucellus, Irish Donn and Welsh Beli Mawr, among others.
In De Natura Deorum, Cicero derives the name of Dīs Pater from the Latin dives, suggesting a meaning of "father of riches", directly corresponding to the name Pluto, Pluto being how Plouton is spelled is Latin.. According to some 19th century authors, many of Cicero's etymological derivations are not to be taken and may indeed have been intended ironically. Alternatively, he may be a secondary reflex of the same god as Jupiter. Dīs Pater became associated with death and the underworld because mineral wealth such as gems and precious metals came from underground, wherein lies the realm of the dead, i.e. Hades' domain. In being conflated with Pluto, Dīs Pater took on some of the latter's mythological attributes, being one of the three sons of Saturn and Ops, along with Jupiter and Neptune, he ruled the dead beside his wife, Proserpina. In literature, Dīs Pater's name was used as a symbolic and poetic way of referring to death itself. In 249 BC and 207 BC, the Roman Senate under senator Lucius Catellius ordained special festivals to appease Dīs Pater and Proserpina.
Every hundred years, a festival was celebrated in his name. According to legend, a round marble altar, Altar of Dīs Pater and Proserpina, was miraculously discovered by the servants of a Sabine called Valesius, the ancestor of the first consul; the servants were digging in the Tarentum on the edge of the Campus Martius to lay foundations following instructions given to Valesius's children in dreams, when they found the altar 20 feet underground. Valesius reburied the altar after three days of games. Sacrifices were offered to this altar during the Ludi Saeculares or Ludi Tarentini, it may have been uncovered for each occasion of the games, to be reburied afterwards, a chthonic tradition of worship. It was rediscovered in 1886–87 beneath the Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Rome. In addition to being considered the ancestor of the Gauls, Dīs Pater was sometimes identified with the Sabine god Soranus. In southern Germany and the Balkans, Dīs Pater had Aericura, as a consort. Dīs Pater was associated with foreign deities in the shortened form of his name, Dis.
Demeter Dievas Dyaus Pita Hades Tiwaz Zeus Crom Media related to Dīs Pater at Wikimedia Commons
Castor and Pollux
Castor and Pollux were twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri. Their mother was Leda. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. In Latin the twins are known as the Gemini or Castores, as well as the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids; when Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair were regarded as the patrons of sailors, they were associated with horsemanship, due to the idea that they rode the'white horses' of foam that were formed by curling ocean waves. There is much contradictory information regarding the parentage of the Dioscuri. In the Homeric Odyssey, they are the sons of Tyndareus alone, but they were sons of Zeus in the Hesiodic Catalogue; the conventional account combined these paternities so that only Pollux was fathered by Zeus, while Leda and her husband Tyndareus conceived Castor.
This explains. The figure of Tyndareus may have entered their tradition to explain their archaic name Tindaridai in Spartan inscriptions, or Tyndaridai in literature, in turn occasioning incompatible accounts of their parentage, their other sisters were Timandra and Philonoe. Castor and Pollux are sometimes both mortal, sometimes both divine. One consistent point is. In Homer's Iliad, Helen looks down from the walls of Troy and wonders why she does not see her brothers among the Achaeans; the narrator remarks that they are both dead and buried back in their homeland of Lacedaemon, thus suggesting that at least in some early traditions, both were mortal. Their death and shared immortality offered by Zeus was material of the lost Cypria in the Epic cycle; the Dioscuri were regarded as helpers of humankind and held to be patrons of travellers and of sailors in particular, who invoked them to seek favourable winds. Their role as horsemen and boxers led to them being regarded as the patrons of athletes and athletic contests.
They characteristically intervened at the moment of crisis, aiding those who honoured or trusted them. Ancient Greek authors tell a number of versions of the story of Pollux. Homer portrays them as ordinary mortals, treating them as dead in the Iliad, but in the Odyssey they are treated as alive though "the corn-bearing earth holds them"; the author describes them as "having honour equal to gods", living on alternate days because of the intervention of Zeus. In both the Odyssey and in Hesiod, they are described as the sons of Leda. In Pindar, Pollux is the son of Zeus; the theme of ambiguous parentage is not unique to Pollux. The Dioscuri are invoked in Alcaeus' Fragment 34a, though whether this poem antedates the Homeric Hymn to the twins is unknown, they appear together in two plays by Euripides and Elektra. Cicero tells the story of how Simonides of Ceos was rebuked by Scopas, his patron, for devoting too much space to praising Castor and Pollux in an ode celebrating Scopas' victory in a chariot race.
Shortly afterwards, Simonides was told. Both Dioscuri were excellent horsemen and hunters who participated in the hunting of the Calydonian Boar and joined the crew of Jason's ship, the Argo. During the expedition of the Argonauts, Pollux took part in a boxing contest and defeated King Amycus of the Bebryces, a savage mythical people in Bithynia. After returning from the voyage, the Dioscuri helped Jason and Peleus to destroy the city of Iolcus in revenge for the treachery of its king Pelias; when their sister Helen was abducted by Theseus, the half-brothers invaded his kingdom of Attica to rescue her. In revenge they abducted Theseus's mother Aethra and took her to Sparta while setting his rival, Menestheus, on the throne of Athens. Aethra was forced to become Helen's slave, she was returned to her home by her grandsons Demophon and Acamas after the fall of Troy. Castor and Pollux aspired to marry the Leucippides and Hilaeira, whose father was a brother of Leucippus. Both women were betrothed to cousins of the Dioscuri, the twin brothers Lynceus and Idas of Thebes, sons of Tyndareus's brother Aphareus.
Castor and Pollux carried the women off to Sparta. This began a family feud among the four sons of the brothers Aphareus; the cousins carried out a cattle-raid in Arcadia together but fell out over the division of the meat. After stealing the herd, but before dividing it, the cousins butchered and roasted a calf; as they prepared to eat, the gigantic Idas suggested that the herd be divided into two parts instead of four, based on which pair of cousins finished their meal first. Castor and Pollux agreed. Idas ate both his portion and Lynceus' portion. Castor and Pollux had been duped, they allo
Orc
An orc is a fictional humanoid creature, part of a fantasy race akin to goblins. While the overall concept of orcs draws on a variety of pre-existing mythology, the main conception of the creatures stems from the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, in particular The Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's works, orcs are a brutish, aggressive and malevolent species, existing in stark contrast with the benevolent Elvish race and serving an evil power. Tolkien's concept of orcs has subsequently been adapted and imported into other works of fantasy fiction as well as role-playing and strategy games, broadening the recognition of the creatures in popular culture. Earlier references to creatures etymologically or conceptually similar to orcs can be found in Anglo-Saxon sources. In popular culture, orcs are variously portrayed but tend towards the descriptions set down by Tolkien, they are of human shape and of varying size. Orcs are ugly and filthy, with prominent fangs and facial features tending toward the grotesque.
Their skin is a shade of green, black, brown, or sometimes red or sandy tan. Orcs are opportunistic carnivores. While possessing a low cunning and crude culture of their own, they are portrayed as a subject race used as soldiers by beings of greater power and intelligence. There are exceptions, as orcs sometimes have cunning leaders of their own species, such as Azog from the Tolkien legendarium. Violent by nature, they will fight ferociously if compelled or directed by a guiding will, but tend towards more chaotic behaviour if left to their own devices, they use boars, wolves and other unusual beasts for battle transport. The modern use of the English term orc to denote a race of evil, humanoid creatures has its inception with J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien's earliest Elvish dictionaries include the entry Ork "monster", "ogre", "demon", together with orqindi and "ogresse". Tolkien sometimes used the plural form orqui in his early texts. Tolkien sometimes in The Hobbit, used the word goblin instead of orc to describe the creatures.
He notes that "orc" is "usually translated" as "goblin". In The Lord of the Rings, "goblin" is used as an alternative to "orc" in chapters describing events from a hobbit's perspective. Thus, the Uruk-hai of Isengard and the Mordor orc-captain Grishnakh are described as both "orcs" and "goblins" in The Lord of the Rings. In his life, Tolkien expressed an intention to change the spelling to ork, but the only place where that spelling occurred in his lifetime was in the published version of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, in the poem Bombadil Goes Boating: "I'll call the orks on you: that'll send you running!" In The Silmarillion, published posthumously, "orcs" was retained. Old English glossaries record the word orc corresponding with Latin Orcus, synonymous with þyrs/ðyrs "ogre", as well as "hell devil"; the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal defines ork in the closely related Old Dutch language as a verslindend monster, points at a possible origin in the Old Dutch nork "petulant, evil person".
The Latin: Orcus is glossed as "Old English: Orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol" as given in the first Cleopatra Glossary, on this entry Thomas Wright wrote, "Orcus was the name for Pluto, the god of the infernal regions, hence we can understand the explanation of hel-deofol. Orc, in Anglo-Saxon, like thyrs, means a spectre, or goblin." The lone literary example is from Beowulf, its poet found use of the orc- stem in orcneas, one of the tribes of creatures named alongside elves and ettins that have been condemned by God: The compound orcneas is designated "evil spirits" above, but its accurate meaning is uncertain. Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc < L. orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses" and that the translation "evils spirits" failed to do justice. The lexicography has been complicated by the Bosworth-Toller dictionary's conjecture that orcneas devolved from the form *orcen meaning " a sea-monster," related to Icelandic: orkn; the Oxford English Dictionary refers to orke, used in 1656 in a way, reminiscent of giants and ogres.
It is presumed that'orke'/'ogre' came into English via continental fairy-tales from the 17th-century French writer Charles Perrault, who borrowed most of his stories and developed his "ogre" from the 16th-century Italian writers Giambattista Basile, Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Basile, who wrote in the Naples dialect and claimed to be passing on oral folktales from his region that he had collected. In at least a dozen or more tales, Basile used huorco, huerco or uerco, the Neapolitan form of orco "giant", "monster", to describe a large, tusked, mannish beast who could speak, that lived away in a dark forest or garden and that might capture and eat humans, or be indifferent or benevolent—all depending on the tale; the Italian term orco is derived directly from the Latin Orcus, is translated into English as "ogre". In early R
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