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=Ianus.= We left Ianus as the numen of the house-door: he passes into the state exactly in the same capacity: the state too has its 'door, the gate at the north-east corner of the Forum, and this becomes the seat of his state-cult the door which, according to Augustan legend, is opened in the time of war and only shut when Rome is at peace with all the world.
The same notion is most likely at the root of the two great domestic cults of Vesta, 'the hearth, and Ianus, 'the door, though a more spiritual idea was soon associated with them; we may notice too in this connection the worship of springs, summed up in the subsequent deity Fons, and of rivers, such as Volturnus, the cult-name of the Tiber.
It was, however, a matter of course that the opening of the year should also be included in the sphere of Ianus, especially after Ianuarius came to be placed at its head. I. IV. Tities and Luceres I. VI. Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities I. VII. Servian Wall I. III. Latium I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses, I. XI. Crimes
Of the domestic worship of Ianus no information has come down to us, but we may well suppose that as the defence of the door and its main use lay with the men of the household, so they, under the control of the pater familias, were responsible for the cult of its spirit. Vesta was, of course, worshipped at the hearth by the women, who most often used it in the preparation of the domestic meals.
But as the little community grew, and especially perhaps after the union of the two settlements, the worship of Iuppiter Feretrius, associated with the sacred oak upon the Capitol the hill between Palatine and Quirinal comes more and more into prominence as a bond of union and the central point of the state's religious life: it tends indeed to take the place of priority, which had previously been occupied by Ianus.
To the rustic stratum possibly belongs also the augurium salutis populi, though later it was a yearly act celebrated whenever the Roman army was not at war and so became connected with the shutting of the temple of Ianus. The state greatly developed and organised the whole system of auguries and auspices.
This is all less imaginative than the development of Ianus, but the underlying feeling is intensely Roman and there could be no clearer idea of the natural adaptation of the household-cult to the religion of the state. =Penates, Lares, and Genius.= The other household deities too have their counterpart, though not so prominently marked, in the worship of the state.
At first, in all probability, the worship was actually of the objects themselves, but by the time that Rome can be said to have existed at all, 'animism' had undoubtedly transformed it into a veneration of the indwelling spirits, Ianus, Vesta, and the Penates.
The Roman religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to it, with the exception, perhaps, of the double-headed Ianus; and Varro even in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and effigies. The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which always marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation.
Praef. ad Histor. August. ex Nummis Antiq. The termination, then, "ianus," always indicated marriage with an heiress, just as such a marriage among ourselves is heraldically marked by the husband and wife's coats of arms being placed alongside of each other; and just as we never depart from this custom in escutcheons, so the Romans never varied their rule with respect to such names; then as Augustus Caesar neither married an heiress, nor was the eldest son of a man who had formed such a marriage; and as this custom of changing the termination of the name was familiar to all the Romans, if not to every ignorant or ill-bred man, at least, to every well-informed, well-bred man among them, it follows as clearly, as that 2 and 2 make 4, that Tacitus, the high-born gentleman and consul, could never have written Caesar Octavianus.
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