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Mythos Atlas

Roman Pantheon

Janus

Also known as Ianus

Illustration of Janus, a deity of the Roman Pantheon
Illustrative imageIllustration of Janus. Generated with an AI image model; not a historical artifact. About our images
  • beginnings
  • gates
  • transitions
  • time
  • doorways
  • endings

God of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. Uniquely Roman deity with no Greek equivalent. Depicted with two faces looking to past and future.

About Janus

Janus, who looks both ways

Janus has no Greek twin, and Romans knew it. He is the god of going in and going out: doors, gates, the first of the year, the first word of a prayer. He is shown with two faces, one toward what has happened and one toward what has not. January bears his name. The gates of his shrine in the Forum, the Janus Geminus, stood open in war and closed in peace, which happened rarely enough to be worth recording.

First invoked

Varro and the pontifical tradition put him at the beginning of ceremony. Before Jupiter is named, Janus is named, because nothing starts without a threshold. Kings in legend, including Numa, are said to have kept his cult as part of teaching Romans how to begin things properly.

War and peace as a door

When the Senate wanted to say that Rome was at peace, it did not compose a hymn. It closed a gate. Janus is that kind of god: practical, architectural, and older in feel than the imported Olympian family, even when later writers tried to place him in a genealogy.

Origin story

Janus is one of the oldest Roman gods, said to have no Greek counterpart. He presided over the beginning and end of conflicts, and hence war and peace. All ceremonies and rituals began with an invocation to Janus.

Across traditions

Parallel figures

Figures who play a role like Janus's in other traditions.

Worship and cult

Temples, festivals, and practices recorded for Janus

Every proper prayer named Janus first. The Forum gates stood open in war and shut in peace. He is a hinge, not a personality cult: oil, wine, and incense at thresholds, and the first month of the year.

Sacred sites

  • Janus Geminus in the Forum, a double gate rather than a house with a statue
  • Temple of Janus at the Forum Holitorium, vowed in the First Punic War

Festivals

  • Agonalia (9 January)
  • Kalends of January

Sources and further reading

Source notes

These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.

  • Virgil, Aeneid, Book VII (trans. Dryden)

    Catalog date: c. 19 BCE

About this entry

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. . Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Parallels are editorial comparisons across traditions: a shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.

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Genealogy

Family tree

Janus's parents, consorts, children and rivals, as recorded in the atlas.

Open the full tree