We're a little over a week into January. January was named after the Roman god Janus. I think I was in grammar school or middle school when I first found this out. But there are a few other things I either didn't know or hadn't thought of.
Janus is a strictly Roman god, with no Greek equivalent. That's one of the things I hadn't really thought of, and it's interesting given the tendency for Roman mythology to come off as a gaudy foreign remake of Greek mythology. Apparently the Romans also believed that he was one of the first kings of Rome. If this is actually true it would provide an interesting point of similarity between the Romans and the Thracians, who also seem to have elevated some of their temporal leaders to godhood.
There's an intriguing suggestion that the worship of Janus continued during the Gothic wars, which were well after the Christianization of Rome, and even into the Middle Ages. Perhaps they looked to him for guidance during another time of great transitions.
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Considering the fact we were born into a couple of thousand years of monotheistc religious traditions it's hard to imagine just how pagan ancient people actually were. In a number of ways they were closer to their gods because the gods were much like them but larger than life. For them (the civilizations before the Greeks and Romans) there was no difference between the mythical and heroic past and the present, and the heroes were believed to still be performing their valorous deeds in the present on another plane of existence in heaven which was not necessarily separate from the world of the living necessarily in an abrupt way. It's kind of a cool idea.
The story of Janus's origin, which appears to be one of the major mysteries of ancient Rome, is an excellent subject for study. Despite the stories and myths, or perhaps because of them, it's impossible to know the true story of any god's origin.. and it seems Janus is the most mysterious of the early gods. One story says he was a king of Latium who was given divine honors because of his religious devotion.
Apparently, another king, Numa, built a shrine where Janus had performed a miracle - it was a tunnel with a statue of the god in the middle with heads that looked at either end. If the gates remained closed that meant there was peace in the land. From 153BC onwards the Roman consuls took office on the first day of January. As the doorkeeper of the heavens, Janus was the route through which one reached all the ther gods.
There's a thin line between saying that wondrous and inexplicable things used to happen but don't now and saying that they never happened at all. In fact subscribing to one tends to lead to the other. The Enlightenment began a process of bringing everything under rationalism, so that even Christianity could be defanged and possibly disposed of later. Greeks and Romans' belief that their gods and heroes were still at work kept their religion current and kept everyone involved. This despite the fact that while their gods were great, they weren't necessarily good by our standards. Possibly not by theirs, either.
As is generally known gods tended to migrate from one region to another, often changing their names and perhaps a few other details in the process. Of course a lot of the Roman pantheon is like this vis a vis Greece, such as Hermes being renamed Mercury. Janus is a little different because he does actually seem to be of Roman origin, or at least Italian. So yes, the idea of him being a king of Latium (home of the Latin language) is credible. If this was the case then the king must have made a powerful impression on his people one way or another.
Numa was an influential leader in pre-Republican Rome. He's credited with the formulation of their religious calendar, and seems to have contributed a lot to their formal religion. As far as worship of the gods is concerned he appears to have been a true believer. The beliefs were very real to them.
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