Janus - Theology and Functions

Theology and Functions

While the fundamental nature of Janus is debated, in most modern scholars' view the set of the god's functions may be seen as being organized around a simple principle: that of presiding over all beginnings and transitions, whether abstract or concrete, sacred or profane. Interpretations concerning the god's fundamental nature either limit it to this general function or emphasize a concrete or particular aspect of it (identifying him with light the sun, the moon, time, movement, the year, doorways, bridges etc.) or see in the god a sort of cosmological principle, i. e. interpret him as a uranic deity.

Almost all these modern interpretations were originally formulated by the ancients.

The function of 'god of beginnings' has been clearly expressed in numerous ancient sources, among them most notably perhaps Cicero, Ovid and Varro. As a god of motion he looks after passages, causes actions to start and presides over all beginnings, and since movement and change are bivalent, he has a double nature, symbolised in his two headed image. He has under his tutelage the stepping in and out of the door of homes, the ianua, which took its name from him, and not viceversa. Similarly his tutelage extends to the covered passages named iani and foremost to the gates of the city, including the cultic gate called the Argiletum, named Ianus Geminus or Porta Ianualis from which he protects Rome against the Sabines. He is also present at the Sororium Tigillum, where he guards the terminus of the ways into Rome from Latium. He has an altar, later a temple near the Porta Carmentalis, where the road leading to Veii ended, as well as being present on the Janiculum, a gateway from Rome out to Etruria.

The connexion of the notions of beginning (principium), movement, transition (eundo), and thence time has been clearly expressed by Cicero. In general, Janus is at the origin of time as the guardian of the gates of Heaven: Jupiter himself moves forth and back because of Janus's working. In one of his temples, probably that of Forum Holitorium, the hands of his statue were positioned to signify the number 355 (the number of days in a year), later 365, symbolically expressing his mastership over time. He presides over the concrete and abstract beginnings of the world, such as religion and the gods themselves, he too holds the access to Heaven and other gods: this is the reason why men must invoke him first, regardless of the god they want to pray or placate. He is the initiator of human life, of new historical ages, and financial enterprises: according to myth he was the first to mint coins and the as, first coin of the libral series, bears his effigy on one face.

Janus frequently symbolized change and transitions such as the progress of future to past, from one condition to another, from one vision to another, and young people's growth to adulthood. He was represented time, because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other. Hence, Janus was worshipped at the beginnings of the harvest and planting times, as well as at marriages, deaths and other beginnings. He represented the middle ground between barbarism and civilization, rural and urban, youth and adulthood. Having jurisdiction over beginnings Janus had an intrinsic association with omens and auspices.

Leonhard Schmitz suggests that he was likely the most important god in the Roman archaic pantheon. He was often invoked together with Iuppiter (Jupiter).

In one of his works G. Dumézil has postulated the existence of a structural difference in level between the Indo-European gods of beginning and ending and the other gods who fall into a tripartite structure, reflecting the most ancient organization of society. So in IE religions there is an introducer god (as Vedic Vâyu and Roman Janus) and a god of ending, a nurturer goddess and a genie of fire (as Vedic Saraswati and Agni, Avestic Armaiti, Anâitâ and Roman Vesta) who show a sort of mutual solidarity: the concept of 'god of ending' is defined in connexion to the human referential, i.e. the current situation of man in the universe, and not to endings as transitions, which are under the jurisdiction of the gods of beginning, owing to the ambivalent nature of the concept. Thus the god of beginning is not structurally reducible to a sovereign god, nor the goddess of ending to any of the three categories on to which the goddesses are distributed. There is though a greater degree of fuzziness concerning the function and role of goddesses, which may have formed a preexisting structure allowing the absorption of the local Mediterrenean mother goddesses, nurturers and protectresses . As a consequence the position of the gods of beginning would not be the issue of a diachronic process of debasement undergone by a supreme uranic god, but rather a structural feature inherent to the theology of such gods. The fall of uranic primordial gods into the condition of deus otiosus is a well known phenomenon in the history of religions. Mircea Eliade gave a positive evaluation of Dumezil's views and of the comparative research results on Indoeuropean religions achieved in Tarpeia. even though he himself in many of his works observed and discussed the phenomenon of the fall of uranic deities in numerous societies of ethnologic interest. The figure of the IE initial god (Vâyu, Vayu, Mainyu, Janus) may open the sacrifice (Vâyu and Janus), preside over the start of the voyage of the soul after death (Iranic Vayu), "stand at the opening of the drama of the moral history of the world" (the Zoroastrian Mainyus). They may have a double moral connotation, perhaps due to the cosmic alternation of light and darkness, as is apparent in the case of Zoroastrianism.

According to Macrobius citing Nigidius Figulus and Cicero, Janus and Jana (Diana) are a pair of divinities, worshipped as Apollo or the sun and moon, whence Janus received sacrifices before all the others, because through him is apparent the way of access to the desired deity.

A similar solar interpretation has been offered by A. Audin who interprets the god as the issue of a long process of development, starting with the Sumeric cultures, from the two solar pillars located on the eastern side of temples, each of them marking the direction of the rising sun at the dates of the two solstices: the southeastern corresponding to the Winter and the northeastern to the Summer solstice. These two pillars would be at the origin of the theology of the divine twins, one of whom is mortal (related to the NE pillar, as confining with the region where the sun does not shine) and the other is immortal (related to the SE pillar and the region where the sun always shines). Later these iconographic models evolved in the Middle East and Egypt into a single column representing two torsos and finally a single body with two heads looking at opposite directions.

Numa in his regulation of the Roman calendar called the first month Januarius after Janus, according to tradition considered the highest divinity at the time.