Thanks to the saturnine god of agriculture, wealth and dissolution, two-faced Janus was given the ability to simultaneously see the future and the past; one face forward, the other back. Janus’ name comes from ‘ianus’, the latin word for door.
Remove the ‘i’ and the name represents another kind of door altogether.
Appropriately, he was the Roman god of gateways, bridges, passageways.
One might think that January – a month where we simultaneously look ahead to the new year and back to the past – is named after Janus. Well… Not necessarily. January is in fact now thought to be named after the patron goddess of Rome: Juno. A goddess of marriage, Juno was often depicted carrying a peacock and armed to the hilt. Draw your own conclusions.
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