JANUS AND JANA, in the Ancient Mythology, two deities held in especial honour by the Romans. The names themselves are derived from die, light, or day; and their original form was Dianus and Diana. Dianus was soon corrupted into Janus, and the analogy holds in the feminine form, for though Diana remained unchanged, she was invoked by the rustics in their prayers and hymns to the new moon as "Jana novella." Janus, as her brother, seems to have been the same with Sol; and though special honours were at first paid to each as a distinct deity, their rites were finally merged into a common worship. It is probable that the Romans borrowed their idea of Janus from the Tuscans, among whom a similar god was worshipped from a very remote period. He presided over the beginnings of things, and hence Horace invokes him in the following strain:—
"Matutine pater, seu Jane libentius audis,
Unde homines operum primos vitaque labores
Instituerunt."
So much importance did the Romans attach to successful beginnings, that when any civil or military undertaking failed at the outset, they often began it anew. In honour of him Numa called the first month of the year Januarius; and as he both looked back upon the past, and forward to the new year, he was always represented with a two-faced head. As the presiding god of the seasons his statue had four heads, his temples were built with four equal sides but only one entrance, and his common designation was "quadrifrons." As the patron of gates (janua), he is provided with a key in his left hand, and a staff in his right. These insignia symbolized his power as the janitor of heaven, whence he was called Patulcius, the opener, and Clusius, the closer. Indeed, all his attributes, numerous and varied as they seem, have reference to the idea of opening and shutting, and, regarding Janus as identical with Sol, symbolize the vivifying influences of his beams on the fruits of the soil and the operations of nature. The great
temple of this divinity at Rome was that of Janus Quirinus, of which the gates were kept open in times of war, and only closed when the state enjoyed universal peace. During the republic these gates were only once shut, at the end of
the first Punic War, B.C. 241. In the reign of Augustus they were closed three times—first, after the battle of Actium, B.C. 29; a second time after the Cantabrian War, B.C. 24; about the third time authors are not agreed.