Tartaruchi

Within the apocryphal visionary corpus represented by texts such as the Apocalypse/Vision of Paul, the tartaruchi are presented as beings appointed or set over the torments of Tartarus; they appear in those narratives at the point where souls are consigned to punishment. The named tartaruchus Temeluchus appears in the same body of apocryphal literature and is treated there as a leading or specified example among the tartaruchi.

Descriptions in the cited sources are sparse. The Apocalypse/Vision of Paul depicts a tartaruchus using one hand to choke damned souls while wielding an "iron of three hooks" in the other, implying an anthropomorphic agent carrying implements of torment. No further consistent bodily details (wings, size, color, or facial features) are provided in the supplied materials.

The Apocalypse/Vision of Paul (chapters cited in summaries as 16 and 18) depicts tartaruchi as receiving condemned souls, casting or taking them down into hell/outer darkness, restraining and torturing them (one hand to choke souls, the other using an iron of three hooks). A separate citation (2 Meqabyan 12:13, as summarized) identifies beings called Thilimyakos—glossed as tartaruchi—as 'Angels of Death' who alit and struck a person in the heart, linking the name in that tradition to execution or causing death at the moment of judgment. Sources present these functions within an apocryphal Christian moral-eschatological framework.