Janus

Janus was a Roman god of doorways, gates, passages and beginnings, shown with two faces looking in opposite directions. He has no Greek counterpart: Ovid says that Greece has no deity like him (Fasti 1.89–90). He was the first god invoked in worship and gave his name to the month of January, and the doors of his temple in Rome stood open in time of war and closed in peace.

The Two Faces of Janus

Janus was shown with two faces. In Ovid’s Fasti the god appears to the poet holding a staff in his right hand and a key in his left (1.99–100), and explains that he can see both east and west without turning his head (1.139–144). Virgil describes ancestor statues in the hall of King Latinus, among them Saturn and the image of two-faced Janus (Aeneid 7.180), and calls him “Janus the father” (Aeneid 8.357). Ovid says the old Roman coin carried a double head of Janus on one side and a ship on the other (Fasti 1.229–230); the ship recalled the arrival of Saturn by ship in Italy after Jupiter drove him from his kingdom in heaven, a landing Janus says he remembers (1.233–240).

The Guardian of Doorways

Ovid connects the god with doors: every door has two fronts, one facing the people and one facing the household god, and Janus, the doorkeeper of heaven, looks out in both directions (Fasti 1.135–140). He says that he guards the doors of heaven with the Hours, and that Jupiter himself goes out and returns by his service (1.125–126). In the same passage he explains his name in two ways, as coming from his office and from the word for a door, janua (1.127, 1.135), and says that in sacrifice he is also called Patulcius, the opener, and Clusius, the closer (1.129–130).

Janus’ Role in Roman Culture

Ovid’s Janus says that he is first invoked in prayer so that the worshipper may reach any other god through him, since he keeps the threshold (Fasti 1.171–174). The first day of the year also belongs to him. Asked why the year begins in midwinter, he answers that the winter solstice is the first day of the new sun and the last of the old (1.149–164); asked why business is done even on the first day, he says that he gave the new-born time to work, so that the whole year would not be idle from its start (1.165–170). The ninth of January, the Agonalia, was a day on which Janus was propitiated (1.317–318).

Janus also controls war and peace. He holds Peace within his house and lets her out when he wishes, but if the bolts were not holding war in, the whole world would be mixed in blood (Fasti 1.121–124). In the Aeneid the gates of war, guarded by Janus, are opened by the consul when the senate decides on war (7.601–615). Livy says that King Numa built the temple of Janus at the lower end of the Argiletum as an index of peace and war: open, it showed that the state was under arms, and shut, that all the surrounding nations were at peace. Livy adds that it had been shut only twice since Numa, once after the first Punic war and once after Actium under Augustus (Livy 1.19.2–3).

Janus and the Beginning of the World

No ancient text makes Janus the creator of the gods or of the universe. Ovid does, however, give him an ancient origin. In the Fasti Janus tells the poet that the ancients called him Chaos: air, fire, water and earth were once a single mass, and when they separated into their places he took his present shape (Fasti 1.103–114).

Ovid also gives Janus a reign in Latium. He says that he lived on the bank of the Tiber in the time when gods lived among men, and that the hill later called the Janiculum was his citadel (Fasti 1.241–250). Virgil says that father Janus built one fortress and Saturn another, called Janiculum and Saturnia (Aeneid 8.355–358). According to Ovid, Venilia bore Janus a daughter, Canens, who became the wife of Picus, king of the Laurentians (Metamorphoses 14.320–338).

Janus and the Sabines

In the story Ovid tells in the Fasti, Janus saves Rome during the war with the Sabine king Titus Tatius, which followed the abduction of the Sabine women. A girl who guarded the citadel betrayed it to Tatius for the Sabines’ bracelets. When the enemy reached the gate and Juno had drawn back its bolts, Janus did not want to fight such a goddess openly. He opened a spring beside the gate and sent a rush of water over the path, after first putting sulphur in the hot veins so that the scalding water barred Tatius’ way. Afterwards an altar and a small shrine were set up for him (Fasti 1.259–276). In the Metamorphoses the same episode is told differently: Venus asks the nymphs of the springs near the temple of Janus to help, and they send up sulphurous water to block the gate (Metamorphoses 14.775–804).

Ovid explains the open doors of the temple in war and the shut doors in peace in the same passage: when the people go out to war the gate stands open, and in peace Janus bars it so that peace cannot leave (Fasti 1.277–282).

Legacy of Janus

The first month of the year takes its name from Janus. Ovid says that the early Roman year had only ten months, beginning with March, and that Numa added two, one of them January, in honour of Janus (Fasti 1.27–44).

Janus Sources

Ovid, Fasti 1.27–44, 1.89–288, 1.317–318; Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.320–338 and 14.775–804; Virgil, Aeneid 7.180, 7.601–615, 8.355–358; Livy 1.19.2–3.

See Also: Romulus, Saturn, Jupiter, Juno, Numa Pompilius, Picus, Canens, Venus