Imaginary interview with Janus
by Charactorium · Janus · Mythology · 6 min read
On the threshold of the Ianus Geminus, at the heart of the Roman Forum, the noise of sandals and merchants fades as soon as one passes under the arch. There stands a presence with two faces, one turned toward what was, the other toward what is to come. Janus agrees to answer, in the eternal present of tradition.
—How do you experience looking in two directions at once?
You see me bifrons, two faces fused to a single neck, and you think it a burden. It is not. One of my foreheads contemplates what has been, the other what will be, and between them passes the slender thread of the present that you mortals call the instant. Ovid said it in his Fasti: I see both what has been and what will be. No other god of Latium possesses this double face. Jupiter rules the sky, Mars war, but I alone hold both banks of time. When a Roman strikes a bronze coin, an as, and engraves my double profile on it, he does not celebrate a curiosity: he acknowledges that every passage implies a back and a face, a door one leaves and a door one approaches.
Between my two faces passes the slender thread of the present that you call the instant.
—Why did the Romans insist on representing you this way rather than with a single face like the other gods?
Because they understood a simple thing: no one crosses a threshold without leaving something behind. A two-headed bust placed on a household altar—that is my truest image, and the sculptors placed it in temples as well as homes. Pliny the Elder calls me the most ancient divinity of the Romans, the one who presides over the beginnings of all things. They could not give me a single face: that would deny that a beginning is also an end. The farmer who opens his janua in the morning leaves sleep and enters labor; the soldier who sets out on campaign leaves his wife and enters danger. My two faces are not an artisan's marvel; they are the exact shape of every crossing.
No one crosses a threshold without leaving something behind.
—Tell us about your temple in the Forum and those doors that were opened or closed.
My temple is not made for kneeling. It consists of two bronze doors, facing each other, and all meaning lies in their panels. When Rome is at war, they are left open, so that I may go out alongside the legions and watch over the passage of return. When peace finally reigns over the entire territory, they are closed, and the bronze clangs like a blessing. Throughout the entire Republic, they were closed only three times. Three times in centuries! My doors are the most honest barometer of your city: no magistrate can lie before an open panel. When young Octavian, who became Augustus, had them closed, all Rome knew that an era was beginning, without a single orator having to proclaim it.
My doors are the most honest barometer of your city.
—How do you feel during those rare moments when your doors close?
A silence. You do not know, you who live short lives, what three closings weigh in centuries of Republic. The Ianus Geminus, that passage the Romans cross every day without thinking, suddenly becomes a sealed sanctuary. The bronze cools. My two faces, for once, contemplate the same thing: a peaceful present, with no war behind and no war ahead. It is a peace that even the gods rarely savor. Numa Pompilius, that wise king who established our rites, regulated the opening of my doors in times of conflict; he knew the price of their closing. When they close, I no longer see soldiers crossing the threshold never to return. And I admit it: of my two faces, neither regrets this rest.
For once, my two faces contemplate the same thing: a peaceful present.
—It is said that you are invoked before all gods, even before Jupiter. How do you explain that?
It is not a matter of rank, it is a matter of order. Before a prayer can reach Jupiter, it must begin—and beginning is my domain. No sacra opens without my name being pronounced first, incense lit, ritual words placed on the lips. Consider: one cannot honor Mars before battle without first crossing the threshold that leads to war, and that threshold is me. Horace reminds us in his Satires: honor Janus on the first day of the month, for he presides over doors and thresholds. The Romans placed me first not out of flattery, but out of logic: a god of beginnings who is invoked second would be a contradiction. I am the key that opens the lock of every prayer.
A god of beginnings who is invoked second would be a contradiction.
—You preside over very diverse moments: wars, marriages, journeys. What do they have in common in your eyes?
All are doors that man opens without knowing what lies behind. The soldier setting out on campaign, the groom crossing the threshold with his bride in his arms, the merchant taking the road to Ostia: each leaves one state for another, and invokes me, sometimes without saying it. They consult the auspices, they watch for the gods' sign, but it is before me that they first stop. I love those moments when life hesitates on the doorstep. The representation gives me a key to open, sometimes a staff to guide—for presiding over a beginning is not decreeing it, but accompanying it. The Roman who prays to me at the start of a journey does not ask for victory: he asks to cross the threshold well.
I love those moments when life hesitates on the doorstep.
—The month of January bears your name. What does this passage from one year to another mean to you?
Ianuarius: it is the only month whose name is also mine, and that is no coincidence. The ending year and the newborn year touch at a single point, an invisible threshold that the Romans had the wisdom to place under my guard. On the morning of the Calends of January, at sunrise, they address the first wishes to me, burn incense, offer honey cakes and wine. My two faces have never been more meaningful than on that day: behind me, twelve months already ashes; before me, twelve months still untouched. The Roman who prays to me that morning does not know what the year holds—and that is precisely why he prays to me. I am the hinge between what he mourns and what he hopes for.
Behind me, twelve months already ashes; before me, twelve months still untouched.
—It is said that at New Year, Romans exchanged gifts in your honor. What would you say about that custom?
The strenae, yes. Small gifts given on the morning of the Calends to ensure a favorable year: a branch plucked from a sacred height, honey, dates, a bronze coin bearing my image. The gesture is modest, but its logic delights me. By offering sweetness, one asks the threshold of the year to be sweet in turn; the first thing tasted colors all that follows. It is sympathy in the ancient sense: what one places on the threshold commits the entire passage. I have seen entire families exchange these gifts before the lararium, the household altar where I receive my offerings at transitions. And I tell you: a people who know how to begin their year with a gift rather than a complaint have already grasped the essence of my cult.
The first thing tasted colors all that follows.
—Your name comes from the Latin word for door. Why was this domain of thresholds entrusted to you?
Janua, the door: it is all there, in that word. A door is neither inside nor outside; it is the in-between, the placeless place where one ceases to be here without yet being there. What god could guard that, if not the one who looks both ways? I am entrusted with the bronze key, symbol of my authority over all access; I close and open, I let in or hold back. The threshold of the humblest dwelling in Latium falls under my purview as much as the pomerium, that sacred boundary separating the city from what is not it. To cross the pomerium is to change worlds, and no one does so without encountering me. I am not the god of walls, which enclose. I am the god of passages through walls, which make life possible.
A door is the in-between, the placeless place where one ceases to be here without yet being there.
—The Janiculum Hill also bears your name. What link do you maintain with these ancient places of Latium?
The Janiculum: that hill overlooking Rome bears the trace of my most ancient name. Before Rome was Rome, even before the legendary founding by Romulus, the peoples of Latium already venerated me in their Italic rites, older than the marble temples. I was a god of the threshold when the threshold was only a stone placed at the entrance of a hut. That is why Pliny calls me the most ancient: I precede altars and colonnades. The key I hold, I already held when doors were only wicker hurdles. Today they seek me in the Forum, in bronze and cut stone; but my true dwelling is every point where two spaces meet. The Janiculum simply reminds me that I guarded passages long before anyone thought to build me a temple.
I was a god of the threshold when the threshold was only a stone placed at the entrance of a hut.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Janus's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.