Temple of Janus (Roman Forum)

According to Livy 1.19 the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, decided to distract the early, warlike Romans from their violent ways by instilling in them awe and reverence. His projects included promoting religion, certain priesthoods, and the building of temples as a distraction with the beneficial effect of imbuing spirituality. The Temple of Janus in the Roman Forum was Numa's most famous architectural project.

The gates were originally built to be used as gates, not as a temple. In the early stages of the city of Rome, the inhabitants lived in separate walled villas. The Temple of Janus was the gate from the Forum to the rest of the Rome as originally the Forum was the courtyard of the king's villa. [3]

Plutarch, in Life of King Numa, wrote:

[Janus] also has a temple at Rome with double doors, which they call the gates of war; for the temple always stands open in time of war, but is closed when peace has come. The latter was a difficult matter, and it rarely happened, since the realm was always engaged in some war, as its increasing size brought it into collision with the barbarous nations which encompassed it round about. But in the time of Augustus it was closed, after he had overthrown Mark Antony; and before that, when Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius were consuls, it was closed a short time; then war broke out again at once, and it was opened.[4]

The gates of the Temple of Janus were the most important part of the structure.The opening and closing of the gates was the reason for the temple's existence. The gates played a large part in the Roman religion as it concerned war, and was something that military leaders had to take seriously to have the support of the people. There are many historical sources which confirm that the gates were closed during times of peace and open during times of war. Each of those sources presents different reasons for the openings and closings: Ennius and Virgil said the gates held Discord and Fury inside the temple during times of peace, some interpretations of Horace imply that peace was imprisoned and guarded by the closed gates, while others say Janus himself was locked inside during times of peace. No matter which interpretation is used, it was seen as a point of pride for all the leaders of Rome to have the gates closed during their rule. [5]

During Numa's reign, the Gates of Janus were closed as Rome was at peace. The next king, Tullus Hostilius, opened the Gates of Janus when he went to war with Alba Longa. The Gates of Janus remained open for the next 400 years until after the First Punic War when T. Manlius Torquatus closed the Gates of Janus in 235 BC. This closure lasted about eight years. War with the Gauls in Northern Italy forced the Gates of Janus to reopen. They did not close again until 29 BC, following the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra.[6]

The Res Gestae Divi Augusti, a first-person account of the life of Augustus, claims:

The Janus Quirinus, which our ancestors wished to be closed whenever peace had been secured by victories throughout the Roman empire by land and sea, was recorded to have been closed, before I was born, twice altogether since the foundation of the city, but the senate decreed that it should be closed on three occasions while I was princeps.[7]

From Cassius Dio 51.20 and 53.27 we are able to date the first two closures in Augustus's reign to 29 and 25 BC respectively. The exact date of the third closure remains a matter of scholarly debate. The only ancient author to date it was Orosius,[8] who associates the event with the birth of Christ, traditionally (but probably incorrectly) assigned to December 1 BC. However, modern scholars almost universally reject Orosius because Roman armies were campaigning in Germany and/or the Far East at this time. Inez Scott Ryberg and Gaius Stern date the third closure more plausibly to 13 BC based on the joint return of Augustus and Agrippa to Rome after pacifying the provinces.[9] Sir Ronald Syme[10] dated the closure to 7 BC, to coincide with the triumph of Tiberius and his second consulship, the events of which year are lost in a gap in the surviving manuscripts of Cassius Dio. Mario Torelli followed Orosius' date.[11]

Nero coin: Obverse: Nero; Reverse: Ara Pacis

Later emperors also closed the Gates of the Janus to great fanfare. The most famous closures occurred under Nero and Vespasian. Nero minted a large series of coins with the Ara Pacis (and the Temple of Janus itself with closed gates) on the reverse to commemorate this event. Other emperors certainly closed and reopened the Gates of the Janus, but references in later and less thorough historians are fairly rare.

The Roman poet Virgil included in the Aeneid the opening of the Gates of the Janus to start war between the Trojans and the Latins.[12]

The legends of Janus have been used for many purposes throughout history. 16th century Roman priests used them to justify the seat of Christianity being moved from Rome to Jerusalem and described the Vatican as the “Throne of Janus”. This was done to gain traction in Italy through the perceived support of the “god of beginnings”.[13]

The story of the Gates of Janus was also used by British political and military leaders during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They portrayed the opening of the Gates as a part of the glory of war and used the legend to add honour to the wars over control of their empire. [14]

There is very little remaining today from any of the reconstructions of the Temple of Janus. A small portion of the surviving brick structure can be found beside the ruins of the Basilica Aemilia, along the path of the Argiletum in the Roman Forum. [15] Despite very little of the structure remaining, a lot of information about the construction can be determined from other archeological evidence. There is evidence of many reconstructions from the temple's depictions on coins. The various styles of architecture seen on those coins suggest rough dates for the reconstructions; both in the third and fourth centuries BCE.[16] The style of arch shown on the coins minted under Nero suggest a rebuild during the fourth century BCE, and the artistic masonry shown also suggests work was done during the third century BCE. Accounts of the temple say it was made of bronze, but due to the depiction on the coins it is assumed that only the interior was sheathed in bronze, as the exterior is shown with Ashlar masonry. [17]

• List of Ancient Roman temples
• Pax Romana
• Temple of Janus (Forum Holitorium)
• Numa Pompilius

• Castagnoli, Ferdinando. 1988. “Gli iani del Foro Romano. Ianus arco quadrifonte?.” Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma XCII: 11-16.
• Claridge, Amanda. 2010. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide. 2nd ed., revised and expanded. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Coarelli, Filippo. 2007. Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• DeBrohun, Jeri Blair. 2007. “The Gates of War (and Peace): Roman Literary Perspectives.” In War and Peace in the Ancient World, Edited by Raaflaub, Kurt A. The Ancient World. Comparative Histories, 256-278. Oxford : Blackwell.
• Staccioli, Romolo Augusto. 1985. “A proposito di una ricostruzione « grafica » del sacello di Giano all'Argileto.” Archeologia Classica 37: 283-289.
• Townend, Gavin. 1980. “Tacitus, Suetonius and the temple of Ianus.” Hermes CVIII: 233-242

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Temple of Janus (Roman Forum).

• Temple of Janus
• Closing of the temple
• Plutarch's Life of Numa