Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
Vol 45 (2000)
Article Abstract

Watching the Skies: Janus, Auspication, and the Shrine in the Roman Forum

Rabun Taylor

The Roman god Janus is famous for two things: his statue in the Forum, which bore two opposing faces, and his shrine, whose antipodal doors were opened in times of war and closed when Rome was at peace. Though many hypotheses have been advanced about the nature of this god, his statue and his shrine have never been satisfactorily reconciled. The present article argues that the early god of this shrine, Ianus Quirinus, assumed the powers of a divine augur. His multifrontality reflected his vigilance in watching the skies for signs. The signs for which he had particular responsibility were the auspices of warfare; when the gates were open, the god was symbolically at work. The shrine itself was a kind of auguraculum, oriented to the points of the compass. Although all traces of it have disappeared, its location can be established with some certainty directly adjacent to the niger lapis and thus at the venue of many Roman wartime deliberations: the Comitium. The god's epithet Quirinus links him not only to the deified Romulus, whose apotheosis, according to one tradition, occurred at the niger lapis, but also to the Quirites, the citizens meeting in the assemblies of the Comitium nearby.