Janus (pronounced jey-nuhs)
(1) In Roman mythology, a god of doorways (and thus also of
beginnings), and of the rising and setting of the sun, usually represented as
having one head with two bearded faces back to back, looking in opposite
directions, historically understood as the past and the future.
(2) When used attributively, to indicate things with two
faces or aspects; or made of two different materials; or having a two-way
action.
(3) In zoology, a diprosopus (two-headed) animal.
(4) In chemistry, used attributively to indicate an azo
dye with a quaternary ammonium group, frequently with the diazo component being
safranine.
(5) In astronomy, a moon of the planet Saturn, located
just outside the rings.
(6) In figurative use, a “two-faced” person; a hypocrite.
(7) In numismatics, (as Janus coin),a coin minted with a head on each
face.
(8) In architecture, as the jānus doorway, a style of
doorway, archway or arcade, the name derived from the Roman deity Iānus (Janus) being
the god of doorways.
Mid-late 1500s: From the Latin Iānus (the ancient Italic
deity Janus), to the Romans of Antiquity, the guardian god of portals, doors,
and gates; patron of beginnings and endings.
The Latin Iānus (literally “gate, arched passageway”) may be from the
primitive Indo-European root ei- (to
go), the cognates including the Sanskrit yanah
(path) and the Old Church Slavonic jado
(to travel). In depictions, Janus is shown
as having two faces, one in front the other in back (an image thought to
represent sunrise and sunset reflect his original role as a solar deity
although it represents also coming and going in general, young and old or (in
recent years) just about anything dichotomous).
The doors of the temple of Janus were traditionally open only during the
time of war and closed to mark the end of the conflict, the origins of
allusions to the “temple of Janus” being used metaphorically to mean conflict
or wartime and the month of January is named after Janus, the link being to “the
beginning of the year”. The most commonly used forms are Janus-faced & Janus-headed while specialized uses include Janus cat (a cat with diprosopus (a condition in which part of the face is duplicated on the head)) and Janus particle (in nanotechnology and physics, a spherical microscopic particle which has hemispheres with sharply differing properties, such as one hydrophilic hemisphere and one hydrophobic hemisphere). Janus is a noun
or proper noun and Janus-like, janian, janiform & januform are adjectives.
Prosthetic in studio (left), Ralph Fiennes (b 1962) on-set in character (centre) and Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 2022-2025) imagined in the same vein (right).
The prosthetic used in the digitally-altered image (right) was a discarded proposal for the depiction of Lord Voldemort in the first film version of JK Rowling's (b 1965) series of Harry Potter children's fantasy novels; it used a Janus-like two-faced head. It's an urban myth Peter Dutton auditioned for the part when the first film was being cast but was rejected as being "too scary". If ever there's another film, the producers could do worse than to cast him and should Mr Dutton not resume (God Forbid) his political career, he could bring to Voldemort the sense of menacing evil the character has never quite achieved, fine though Mr Fiennes' performance surely was. Interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never denied being a Freemason.
Roman
cast bronze coin from the
aes grave series, circa 225-217 BC; it shows the bearded head of Janus opposite the prow of a war galley.
In the
lushly populated pantheon of Roman gods, Janus (Iānus) was one of the oldest, represented
with two faces, one looking forwards and the other backwards (ie artistically, to
the left & right). In some of the
myths, Janus was a native of Rome where, at some point, he ruled with Camesus
while others claimed he came from Thessaly and ended up in Rome as an exile, welcomed
there by Camesus, who shared his kingdom with him. He ruled alone after the death of his host
and in many tales Janus built a city on a hill (consequently
called Janiculum as would have been the convention). He had come to Italy with his wife (Camasenea or Camise) and the best
known of their children was Tiberinus. Janus
received Saturn when he was driven from Greece by Jupiter, Saturn ruling over Saturnia,
a village situated on the heights of the capitol. By consensus, it seems that during the reign
of Janus people unfailingly were honourable & honest (the stories from
Antiquity are well-named as “myths”) and there was universal peace and
prosperity. While trade was as old as
humanity and it’s clear there had been various means of exchange, it’s Janus
who is credited with inventing “money” in the modern sense in which currency is
understood, the oldest known Roman bronze Roman coins cast with an effigy of
Janus on one side and the prow of a boat on the reverse. Where the myth-tellers differ is whether the “civilizing”
of the first natives of Latium can be attributed to Janus or Saturn but upon
his death he was deified so there was some sense of gratitude.
The fate of Tarpeia,
pressed (bludgeoned in some stories) to death by the shields of the Sabines.
In the way the myths did
tend to multiply, other legends became attached to his memory, the most famous
being the events which transpired after Romulus and his companions had carried
off the Sabine women, prompting Titus Tatius and the Sabines to attack the
city. One night, driven by her lust for
Tatius, the treacherous Tarpeia delivered the citadel into the hands of the Sabines
but rather than wedding her as he had promised, Tatius had her put to death on
the very Roman basis: “nobody likes a
snitch”. His soldiers had already
scaled the heights of the Capitol when Janus launched a jet of hot water which put
them to flight; to commemorate this military miracle, it was decreed that in
time of war the door of the Temple of Janus should always be left open so in
times of trouble the god could come to the aid of the Romans. It was closed only if the Roman Empire was at
peace. Janus was said also to have married
the Nymph Juturna who gave him a son, the god Fontus (or Fons).
(John)
Foster Dulles (1888–1959; US Secretary of State 1953-1959, left) with Dwight
Eisenhower (1890-1969; US POTUS 1953-1961, right), Washington DC, 1955.
The terms “Janus-faced” or “Janus-headed” are used in engineering an architecture to describe designs where the “face” or “head” of an object or shape is duplicated but the idea usually is applied to people. To speak of someone as being “two faced” is to suggest, variously, they’re deceitful, duplicitous or hypocritical. Many have been damned (and sometimes even admired) as “two-faced” but on one occasion, after someone had observed Foster Dulles was “a bit two-faced” about something, Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) responded he couldn’t be because “…if he had two faces, he wouldn’t use that one.” During his not infrequent criticisms of Dulles, habitually Churchill would speak of his “great slab of a face” although in retirement the old enmities (mostly) were forgotten and in May 1959 he visited him in his hospital room in Washington DC. The two had “a pleasant chat” and within a fortnight Dulles was dead.
Noses down:
Albert Speer
(1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments & war
production 1942-1945, (left) and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and
German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945, right) study plans for Linz's new opera house, the Berghof on the Obersalzberg,
21 June 1939 (photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957; Nazi court
photographer), Bavarian State Library's
Fotoarchiv Hoffmann).
Sometimes,
such realizations, literal or figurative, come too late. In the entry Speer made on 30 November 1946
in his clandestine prison diary (Spandauer
Tagebücher (Spandau: The Secret Diaries) (1975)) is the passage: “Once
again I am obsessed by the thought of Hitler’s two faces, and that for so long a time I did not
see the second behind the first. It was
only toward the end, during the last months, that I suddenly became aware of
the duality; and, significantly, my insight was connected with an aesthetic
observation: I suddenly discovered how ugly, how repellent and ill
proportioned, Hitler’s face was. How could I have overlooked that for so many
years?” Clearly, such thoughts stayed with him because
on 8 December 1953 he noted: “Last night I had the following dream: In a rather sizable
group, sometime toward the end of the war, I declare that everything is lost,
that there is no longer a chance and the secret weapons
do not exist. The others in the dream
remain anonymous. Suddenly Hitler emerges from their midst I am afraid that he will have
heard my remark and may order my arrest.
My anxiety increases because Hitler’s retinue displays extreme iciness. Nobody says a word to me. Suddenly the scene changes. We are in a house on a slope, with a narrow
driveway. Only
gradually do I realize that it is Eva Braun’s [Eva Hitler (née Braun;
1912–1945)] house. Hider comes to tea, sits
facing me, but remains frosty and forbidding. He chews the comers of his fingernails, as he
so often did. There are bloody places
where they are bitten down to the quick. Looking into his swollen face, I realize for
the first time that perhaps Hitler wore his moustache in order to divert
attention from his excessively large, ill-proportioned nose. Now I am afraid that I
will be arrested any moment because I have perceived the secret of his nose. Heart pounding, I wake up.”
An eighteenth century carving of Janus in the style of a
herm.
A part of the etymological legacy of the Roman Empire, the name Janus appears
in several European languages. In Danish
(from the Latin Iānus), it’s a Latinization of the Danish given
name Jens. In Faroese, it’s a male given
name which begat (1) Janussson or Janusarson (son of Janus) and
(2) Janusdóttir or Janusardóttir (daughter of Janus). In Estonian it’s a male given name. In Polish, it’s both a masculine & feminine
surname (the feminine surname being indeclinable (a word that is not
grammatically inflected). There is no anglicized form of the Latin name Janus. Although it was never common and is now regarded by most genealogy authorities as "rare", when used in the English-speaking world the spelling remain "Janus". Often, when Latin names were adopted in English, even when the spelling was unaltered, there were modifications to suit local phonetics but Janus is pronounced still just as it would have been by a Roman.
Tristar pictures used the Janus motif in promotional material for I Know Who Killed Me (2007). Not well-received upon release, it's since picked up a cult following.
Dating from the 1580s, was from the
Latin ianitor (doorkeeper, porter),
from ianua (door, entrance, gate),
the construct being ianus (arched
passageway, arcade" + tor (the agent suffix). The meaning “usher in a school” and later “doorkeeper”
emerged in the 1620s white the more specific (and in Scotland and North America enduring) sense
of “a caretaker of a building, man employed to attend to cleaning and tidiness”
seems first to have been documented in 1708 (the now unused feminine forms were
janitress (1806) & janitrix (1818). Why janitor survived in general use in Scotland and North America and not elsewhere in the English-speaking world is a mystery although the influence of US popular culture (film and television) did see something of a late twentieth century revival and in sub-cultures like 4chan and other places which grew out of the more anarchic bulletin boards of the 1980s & 1990s, a janitor is the (often disparaging) term for a content moderator for a discussion forum.
Augustus Orders the Closing
of the Doors of the Temple of Janus
(circa 1681), oil on canvas by Louis de Boullogne (1654–1733), Rhode Island
School of Design Museum.
Among the more annoying things encountered by those learning
English are surely Janus words, those with opposite meanings within themselves. Examples include: Hew can mean cutting something down or adhering closely
to it. Sanction may mean “formal
approval or permission” or “an official ban, penalty, or deterrent”. Scan can mean “to look slowly and carefully”
or “quickly to glance; a cursory examination”.
Inflammable, which many take to mean “easy to burn” but the treachery
of the word lies in the in- prefix which is often used as a negative, with the
result that inflammable can be deconstructed as “not flammable”. Trip can (and usually does) suggest clumsiness
but can also imply some nimbleness or lightness of foot, as in the saying “trip
the light fantastic”. Oversight is a
particularly egregious example. To
exercise oversight over someone or something is provide careful, watchful
supervision yet an oversight is an omission or mistake. In the ever-shifting newspeak of popular
culture, the creation of the janus-word is often deliberate. Filth can mean “of the finest quality”, wicked can mean “very good” and in the way which might have pleased George Orwell (1903-1950) "bad" has become classic “newspeak” (coined by Orwell for Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and used now to describe ambiguous, misleading, or euphemistic words, used deliberately to deceive, typically by politicians, bureaucrats or corporations). “Bad
weed” can mean the drug was either of fine or poor quality depending
on the sentence structure: “that was bad weed” might well suggest it was of not good while “man, that was some bad weed” probably means it was good
indeed. Saying nice now seems rarely
to mean what dictionaries say nice has come to mean but can variously describe
something wonderful, appalling or disgusting.
