by Terry McCombs

Janus was one of the oldest and most distinctively Roman gods — one of the few major Roman deities without a Greek counterpart. As the god of doorways, archways, beginnings, and the boundaries between past and future, war and peace, civilization and barbarism, he presided over every threshold a Roman might cross. His two faces did not look alike: one bearded, one clean-shaven, one facing forward, one back, representing two different realms simultaneously rather than a simple mirror of the same self. This profile, posted to soc.religion.paganism on New Year's Eve 2007 as part of Terry McCombs's long-running God of the Month Club series, captures the full range of Janus's mythology — from his shifting origin stories and his peaceful and wartime temples to his surprising reappearance in fourteenth-century Italian Paganism.

NAME: Janus, Ianus, Janus Geminus, Janus Bifrons, Janus Quadrifrons

SYMBOLS: Doors, archways, gates. Bunch of keys. Sunrise, sunset. The numbers 300 and 65.

USUAL IMAGE: A man's profile with two faces facing in opposite directions; the faces do not look exactly alike. In early versions one is bearded while the other is clean-shaven. There are even a few images with one head male and the other female.

HOLY BOOKS: Aeneid by Virgil

HOLY DAYS: The month of January. January 1st. January 9th, Agonalia to Janus, at which time a ram was sacrificed to Janus. March 30th.

PLACE OF WORSHIP: Temple, often one that is a symmetrical square with four doors, one for each direction, and three windows each side, one for each month.

RELATIVES: Ouranos (father). Apollo and an unnamed human woman (father and mother) in other traditions. Juturna, Goddess of wells and springs (wife). Fontus or Fons, god of wells (son). Jana, Goddess of the Moon (wife) in the Janarra Tradition of La Vecchia Religione revival of the 14th century. The Hours (children in another myth).

SYNODEITIES: Bhairava, "terrible" Ksetrapala (Hindu). Kushi-Dama-Nigi-Haya-Hi, "soft fast sun" (Shinto). Patadharini, "bearing a cloth" (Buddhist).

Details

Janus the Roman god of sunrise, sunset, doorways, change, beginnings, and the boundary between such things as the past and future, civilization and barbarism, youth and adulthood, war and peace, was one of the few Roman gods not to have a Greek counterpart.

A very old god, his story has changed many times over the years. In different eras he was described as a human who founded a great town and invented money and was awarded the status of being a god; or as the son of Apollo with a human woman in one myth; while in another he was said to have been created directly by Father Sky Ouranos as a gift for Hecate. (It didn't work out between them.)

While his worship died out around the 5th century, he made a return in the 14th century in La Vecchia Religione, an attempted revival of Italy's Pagan past. Only this time his wife from the old days, Juturna the Goddess of springs, was replaced by Jana, a moon Goddess.

His appearance has also varied greatly from one time and place to another.

Always with two faces, he is sometimes only an immobile head that must be cared for by his children the Hours; to a fully formed man, holding a staff and set of keys, who just happens to look in two different realms at the same time.

Of note is the fact that while he is one man with two faces, it's not a given that those faces look alike.

Sometimes shown clean-shaven, sometimes with a beard, sometimes one each — whatever the case, the faces bearded or not seldom are twins.

As the god who watched the border between war and peace, his temple doors were kept open during war and only shut in times of peace — which, throughout most of Roman history, no matter the prevailing beliefs about his origins or form, his were the most open temples of all.

Colophon

Written by Terry McCombs and posted to soc.religion.paganism on December 31, 2007, as part of his long-running God of the Month Club series. This profile was reposted without significant change on December 31, 2008 (Message-ID: <[email protected]>). Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

McCombs ran the God of the Month Club in soc.religion.paganism from 2003 through at least 2009, producing cross-cultural profiles of deities from every major tradition. Janus, posted on New Year's Eve, was one of the few Roman-only gods in the series — a deity with no Greek equivalent, presiding over the threshold between the old year and the new.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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