Domain: Beginnings, endings, transitions, doorways, time, duality Symbol: Two faces, door, key Greek Equivalent: None (uniquely Roman)
Overview
Janus is the uniquely Roman god of beginnings and endings, of gates, doorways, passages, transitions, time, and duality. He is one of the few major deities with no Greek equivalent — a genuinely native Italian god whom the Romans regarded as belonging peculiarly to themselves. He is depicted as Janus bifrons, "two-faced," one countenance turned forward toward the future and one back toward the past, so that he sees at once what comes and what has been and stands watch over every threshold where one state gives way to another. The month of January, the hinge of the old and new year, is named for him.
His symbols follow from his office. He holds a key, with which doors are opened and closed, and a staff by which he guides travellers through their passages; the door and the gate are themselves his emblems. Because every undertaking is a kind of beginning, he was invoked first in Roman prayer and sacrifice, receiving his portion before all other gods — even before Jupiter — as the opener of the way. He was said, in Rome's foundation legends, to have received the exiled Saturn into Italy and to have reigned in Latium in the earliest age, and by one tradition he caused a spring to burst forth to repel the Sabines when they attacked the city.
His most famous cult site, the Temple of Janus in the Forum, served as a barometer of the Roman state: its gates stood open in time of war and were closed only in the rare intervals of complete peace — a ceremony recorded as having occurred only a handful of times across centuries. In this way the god of transitions marked the great transition between war and peace for the whole community.
In Jungian terms Janus is readily read as the god of thresholds and liminal spaces — the figure who integrates past and future and holds paradox and duality together without collapsing either side, presiding over the crossings by which one condition of the psyche passes into the next.
Related
- Jupiter - Preceded in ritual precedence by Janus
- Saturn - Received into Italy by Janus in the earliest age
- Jungian Archetypes
- Roman Mythology Index