Chapter 27 Discussion / Why LV is bad / How TMR found the CoS / Cup Soul Bit

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184213

Carol earlier:
> > 
> > <snip> A Dark Wizard graduating from Durmstrang and creating
Horcruxes would be someone else's problem, and besides, both DD and LV
seem to know of only one other Wizard (Herpo the Foul?) who created a
Horcrux, and that was only a single Horcrux.
> 
> 
> Marianne responds:
> 
> Herpo the Foul?  Or another Dark Wizard?  I've not heard that name
mentioned or the possibility of another Dark Wizard from another
school. But there's a lot of things I'm learning about the books from
this list that I've never considered before or just have forgotten. 
In what book was another Dark Wizard mentioned?
>
>
Carol responds:

I'm not sure what you mean about another Dark Wizard being mentioned,
so forgive me if I don't give you the answer you're looking for.
Obviously, Voldemort is neither the first nor the last Dark wizard
(Grindelwald was another, but he didn't create a Horcrux). LV is
variously described as the greatest Dark Wizard in a century and the
greatest Dark Wizard of all time, obviously indicating that there were
others. And Slytherin, who hatched the Basilisk and hid it in the
Chamber of Secrets, was obviously another. Although "Dark Wizard"
isn't specifically defined, Snape in his DADA speech speaks as if Dark
Wizards are those who routinely practice the Dark Arts/Dark Magic (he
says that an Inferius is "a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark
wizard's spells," HBP Am. ed. 460. Presumably Voldemort isn't the
first Wizard to create one, though he may be the first to create an
army of them.)

Herpo the Foul, mentioned in Fantastic Beasts, was an ancient Greek
Dark Wizard, a Parselmouth, and the creator of the first Basilisk. I
suspect that he was also an ancestor of Salazar Slytherin (and,
consequently, of Tom riddle/Voldemort. JKR said on Pottercast that the
first Horcrux was probably created by Herpo the Foul, though she
doesn't state it as a fact, just a conjecture on her part:

"SU: (laughs) Oh, yeah. (JN: Yes.) Oh, but Jo, those Horcruxes,
though, I tell ya. There's so much to ask still about those. Okay, we
have to know. Who created the first Horcrux? Was it Grindelwald?
Salazar? Who did that?

"JKR: Do you know what? I got a feeling it was Herpo, (SU: Oh!) which
is H-E-R-P-O. (SU: Herpo the Foul?) I think I called him Herpo the
Foul. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, wizards would have been
looking for ways to do exactly what Voldemort did for years. And some
of the ways they would have tried would've killed them. So, I imagine
it- well, they're huge parallels- splitting the atom would be a very
good parallel in our world. Something that people imagine might be
able to do be done, but couldn't quite bring it off and then people
started doing it, with sometimes catastrophic effects. So that's how I
see the Horcrux."

http://pottercast.the-leaky-cauldron.org/transcript/show/166?ordernum=1

In HBP, DD tells Harry, "As far as I know--as far, I am sure, as
Voldemort knew--no wiaard has ever done more than tear his soul in
two" (ie., create one Horcrux), HBP 500. I thought that the (obviously
Dark) Wizard that they both knew about (and whose accomplishment was
the subject of the books on Horcruxes that DD removed from the
library, too late to preven Tom Riddle from creating the diary
Horcrux), was Grindelwald, but I was obviously wrong. It's also clear
that Slytherin didn't make one. That leaves Herpo the Foul as the only
other named Dark Wizard from earlier times, and, as I said, JKR
specifically mentions him on the Pottercast segment.

There may be more on Herpo at the Lexicon, but I can't get the site to
work.

Carol, wondering whether the Lexicon has been taken down