Janus
Janus,god of door and gate (ianua) at Rome. Like a door, he looked both ways, and is therefore depicted as a double-headed and bearded man (the image chosen for many early Roman coins). More generally he controlled beginnings, most notably as the eponym of the month January (he was named first in prayer, e.g. Livy 8. 9. 6, the devotio (ritual self-sacrifice) of Publius Decius Mus), and was linked with the symbolism of the gate at the beginning and end of military campaigns (the bad omen of the departure of the Fabii from Rome before their destruction at the battle of the Cremera involved going through the right-hand ianus or arch of the city-gate instead of the left, Livy 2. 49. 8). This was most famously expressed in the ritual of the closing of the temple of Janus Geminus in the Forum in times of complete peace: under Numa, in 235 BC, three times under Augustus, and more frequently in the imperial period.
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