Spector
Umbrian · deity · Iguvine Umbrian religion; 3rd 1st c. BCE · deity
Spector is known from a single line of the Iguvine Tablets, where a victim brought from elsewhere is offered to him in the remedial sacrifice of Tabula II. His name means 'the one who watches', and the related adjective speturie belongs to the language of augury and of the inspection of entrails, which is the whole of the evidence for his function: the tablets describe no act of his. The comparison with the Etruscan threshold-guardian Culśanś rests on that sense of the name. The record is kept deliberately thin, since padding it would mean inventing a god out of an etymology.
Domains
- augury
- protection
Powers
- to watch — the function carried by the name itself, 'the one who observes'
Relations
- ally: Vesticius Sancius
Sources
- Iguvine Tablets, Tabula IIa 5.
- Lexical discussion of Umbrian speture < Proto-Italic *spek-tor and of the adjective speturie; the comparison with Etruscan Culśanś as a watchman deity.