Monster: The Cacus
Appearance: Cartoon Network Action Pack! #39 "The Cave of the Cacus" September 2009
Will Sweeny: Penciller, Mike Manley: Inker, Heroic Age: Colorist, Travis Lanham: Letterer, Sean Ryan: Editor
The Cacus, whose name means "wicked" is a monster from Greek and Roman mythology. The offspring of Medusa and Hephaestus/Vulcan, it's described as having a huge spherical, spider-like body, long legs like tree trunks and three fire-breathing human heads emerging from a single neck.
This depiction is probably meant to be interpreted as some sort of hideous bi-pedal giant (or a regular giant as depicted above defeated by Hercules in Bartolommeo Bandinelli's statue located in Florence), but for the purposes of The Secret Saturdays, which treats it's cryptozoological creatures as more biologically plausible, I went with the idea of the cacus being a huge three-headed hunting spider. Like it's mythological counterpart, the cacus here also resided in a cave from which it would spring forth to catch an unwary sheep as prey. The Saturdays, upon investigating, find that the cacus has only recently been terrorizing the local livestock, and that for previous millennia, it had been watched over and fed by an assigned caretaker. the recent caretaker had died without placing a successor, leaving his secret charge to fend for itself.
The cacus of mythology who would venture forth from its cave above the River Tiber to devour either livestock or human prey. It was eventually slain by Heracles/Hercules while watching over Geryon's herd.
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