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latter would not only have retained his high rank, but that he would 

 have been raised to new honours by this Greek importation, just as 

 Diana had all the benefit of the adoption, by Rome, of the myths of 

 Artemis, whose Greek name was not adopted like that of Apollo. But 

 it appears the celebrity of the Delphian oracle had made the name of 

 Apollo so famous in Italy at an early period, that poor Janus was ousted 

 by him from his honourable position, and relegated to the humble station 

 which we find him occupy in later times. 



But whence the connexion of the sun-god and the doors ? All the 

 other points in the theology of Janus have been cleared up ; let us hope 

 the god of light will not leave us in the dark here. Our previous remarks 

 have shown that the door, janua, was not the idea which gave rise to 

 the notion of Janus, the great national god, but that it must have been 

 a secondary attribute. What was the link connecting the sun-god with 

 the door? Janus is the name of the god, and it also means a passage. 

 Is the god called from the passage, or vice versa, the passage from the 

 god ; or was neither the case, and were the two words independent of 

 one another in their origin ? The last has been supposed to be the tmth, 

 and this casual similarity of name has been held to be the reason why 

 doors were placed under the guardianship of Janus. But this cannot 

 be admitted; for we find that the Greek Apollo, the god of the sun, 

 was likewise the protector of doors and streets.* This shows that in 

 the opinion of the Greeks and of the Romans there must have been 

 something in the nature and attributes of the sun-god which qualified 

 him especially for the office in question. Nor shall we have any 

 difficulty in discovering what this was. The sun opens and closes the 

 day and the year, he turns the celestial hinges — why should he not 

 have a similar office in the civil communities and in the private house ? 

 As Vesta presides in the interior of the town and dwelling, as the 

 tutelary deity of the family hearth, so Janus was placed at the threshhold 

 to vouchsafe a happy going in and coming out.f As the Temple of Vesta 

 represented the common hearth of the city — the emblem of political 

 union, so the archway of Janus was the symbolical gate of the com- 

 munity, kept open in time of war, not as Ovid says, to let out the furies 

 of war, which are again to be locked up there in peace, nor, as Heyne 

 conjectures, to enable the citizens to enter the sanctuary for the purpose 

 of supplication, but simply that the god might be enabled to rush out and 

 succour his worshippers if he saw them in danger. This he had actually 

 done in the time of Romulus ; for when the Romans were hard pressed 

 by the Sabines, and were fleeing towards the gate of their city on the 



* As Apollo, ^wpaTog and 'Ayvtsiif. 

 + Cif. N. D. II. 27. 



