Roman mythology · God of doors and beginnings
Janus
Two faces, one to the past and one to the future; when the doors of his shrine were shut, Rome was at peace.
Stories and legends
Janus is the god of doors, passages, beginnings, and transitions, with two faces, one looking to the past and one to the future, holding a key in one hand and a staff in the other. Romans called on his name before invoking any other god, the first month of the year was named January (Ianuarius) after him, and his festival, the Agonalia, was held on 9 January. On the northern side of the Roman Forum stood his small shrine, called the Janus Geminus, with a bronze door at each end: the doors stood open when Rome went to war and were closed in times of peace, and a closed door was read as a sign that peace had come. Romans also said that Janus once gave shelter to Saturn, the god of agriculture, after Jupiter drove him from heaven, and that Saturn sailed to Italy, bringing farming and tranquillity to the land from then on.
Origins of the story
What can be verified is the religious system and the literary record: Janus was a very ancient native Roman god, and Ovid states plainly in the Fasti that the Greeks had no equivalent god; he had no dedicated priest of his own, and his rites were conducted by the rex sacrorum. The opening and closing of the Janus Geminus shrine is attested by several ancient writers, including Livy, Ovid, and Suetonius; Livy says the doors were closed only twice between Numa and Augustus, but the actual number of closings in the Augustan period differs between sources, so this remains open. The story of Janus sheltering Saturn belongs to mythical narrative, not to history. One point deserves your attention: the famous four-sided arch in the Forum Boarium, known today as the Arch of Janus, is in fact a building of the early fourth century AD, its name dates from the Renaissance, and its original inscription is fragmentary, so scholars still debate which emperor it was built to honour; it must not be taken for the original site of the Janus Geminus shrine in the Forum.
Places you can visit
You can see a double-faced bust of Janus in the Vatican Museums, where the two faces turned back to back are the most direct way to recognise this god; the Arch of Janus beside the Forum Boarium is the only surviving four-sided arch in Rome, with an opening on all four sides, and you can walk around it to take in the four-way form, though you should keep in mind that it is a different thing from the shrine in the Forum; and the area of the Roman Forum is where the Janus Geminus shrine once stood, though very little survives above ground today, and the site markers and the surrounding Forum buildings are the main aids to imagining where it was.
Image source · Arch of Janus by the Forum Boarium (4th century, not the shrine of Janus Geminus) · Yair Haklai · CC BY-SA 3.0
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