Temple of Janus (Rome)

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Ianus Quirinus with closed gates on a sesterce of Nero
Peter Paul Rubens Temple of Janus (1635, Hermitage , St. Petersburg )

The building known as the Temple of Janus in ancient Rome was a shrine dedicated to Ianus Geminus (double Ianus) or Ianus Quirinus . In ancient times, the construction of the shrine was attributed to the legendary King Numa Pompilius . The original building was probably a wooden structure, but in the Augustan period it was replaced by a bronze shrine. The exact location has not been clarified; the shrine was probably located on Argiletum , the road between Basilica Aemilia and Curia Iulia .

The coins of Nero and Augustus, as well as a description handed down by Prokopios of Caesarea , give a relatively precise idea of ​​the no longer preserved building. It was not actually a temple ( aedes ), but a cuboid building ( ianus ) with two gates. Similar, secular doorways were also called ianus . Inside was the archaic, oversized cult image of the two-faced god Janus . The cult image, whose great age Pliny testifies, was also made of bronze and had a key and a staff as attributes. Of the two bearded faces, with the gates open for all to see, one each looked to the west and one to the east.

The gates of Janus remained open while Rome was at war and were closed when all the borders of the empire were at peace . The prerequisite for the closure was that the previous war had ended (at least allegedly) with a Roman victory , as the Romans could not accept a dictated peace according to their understanding of rule. Emperor Nero's lost campaign in Armenia is a significant exception : although the Roman armed forces were inferior to the Parthians , the people were fooled into a brilliant victory and the shrine was then closed. Nero also had the closed gate depicted on coins.

In the times of the Roman Republic the closure took place extremely rarely: once under the mythical builder King Numa, once after the end of the first Punic war against Carthage (264–241 BC) and again after the battle of Actium ( 31 BC) . BC ) under the rule of Octavian, who later became the first emperor Augustus . In his Res Gestae he boasted that the gates were closed three times under his rule:

The Ianus Quirinus, which, according to the wish of our forefathers, should be closed when there was peace achieved through victories in the entire Roman Empire - this is said to have happened only twice before my birth since the city was founded - while I was the first man in the state, it was closed three times by order of the Senate.

Some historians suspect that the practice was in fact only introduced by Augustus, as the evidence for the two earlier occasions is late and problematic. Quirinus , the name of the ancient Roman god of war as an epithet of Ianus or as the name of the cult building ( Ianus Quirinus could then also be translated as “Gates of Quirinus”), was only established in connection with the “renewal” of this ritual, which also included refer to the nicknames Patulcius ("opener") and Clusivius ("closer").

Overall, as far as we know, in the period after Augustus only three other rulers closed the gates: Nero , Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius . However, the tradition on this point is very sketchy. The Last Emperor, knows which one he the doors open behind was Gordian III. who, according to Eutrop (Brev. 9.2), Aurelius Victor (27.7) and Orosius (Hist. adv. pag. 7,19,4), initiated this ceremony before going to war against the Persian Sassanids where he found death in 244. It is noteworthy that Orosius expressly states that Gordian III. was the first emperor since Vespasian to have the gates opened, while Aurelius Victor states that they have only been closed since Marcus Aurelius. It is likely that Gordian's successor Philip Arabs , who let propaganda celebrate the subsequent peace with the Persians, had the gates closed again, but this is not reported in the sources that have survived.

Before the Ianus Quirinus there was a piece of land that could symbolically be declared as "enemy territory" in order to be able to declare war on the people in question in the traditional way, since the Roman tradition prescribed that war be thrown by a fetial (a special priest ) to declare on enemy territory.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Livy Ab urbe condita 1, 19
  2. ↑ Prokop Bellum Gothicum 1.25
  3. ↑ Pliny Naturalis historia 34:33
  4. ↑ Ovid Fasti 1.99; 1,140
  5. ↑ Virgil Aeneid 7.601-615.
  6. ↑ BMC : Nero 320; RIC : Nero 439
  7. ↑ Res gestae divi Augusti , 13: Ianum Quirinum, quem claussum esse maiores nostri voluerunt, cum per totum imperium populi Romani terra marique esset parta victoriis pax, cum prius quam nascerer a condita urbe to omnino clausum fuisse claoria prodatur meme, ter meudendipe senatus eat censuit.
  8. ↑ Ovid Fasti 1,129f. Macrobius Convivia primi diei Saturnaliorum 1,9,16