With reference to his description as “bifrons,” Macrobius says (some say) he was so called “because he knew the past and future things.... Some pretend to prove that Janus is the Sun, and that he is represented with two faces, because he is master of the two doors[180] of heaven, and opens the day at his rising and shuts it at his setting.”
A good secondary explanation is,[181] that “as Janus always began the year” (whence January) “the two heads do look on and import the old and new year” but then occurs the question—and this is why I submit that it is only a secondary explanation—how came Janus to commence the year?
In the nomenclature of the calendar connected with any system of hero worship, worship of ancestors, or even spirit worship, who more fitly chosen to commence the year than Janus, supposing him to be Noah?
There are, however, two what we may call primary explanations, and we must take our choice. The epithet is either applied to him, as exactly according with the reminiscence of Noah, who was pre-eminently acquainted with the past and the future; or we can take the astral explanation that Janus was called Bifrons,[182] because he opened the sun at his rising and shut it at his setting. As a symbol of Noah this double head appears to me very simple and natural, Noah forming the connecting link between the antediluvian and modern worlds; but as applied to the Sun or to Janus as in relation to the Sun, even allowing for personification, this twofold head of man strikes me as incongruous in the extreme. Besides, if it be allowed that it might apply to Saturn and Janus through the connecting idea of Chronos, how does it apply to Bacchus? Let us press this argument further. Here is a symbol common to Bacchus, Saturn, and Janus, and combining harmoniously in each instance with the representation of Noah. Can this symbol, common to these three, combine even congruously with any solar or astral legend? I have somewhere seen it noted as suspicious and as tending to confirm the solar theory that these mythological personages all “journey from east to west, and meet their fate in the evening.” But is this so? Have we not just seen that Bacchus, according to mythology, travelled from the west into India?
But not only were Saturn, Janus, and Bacchus represented as “bifrons,” but so also was Cecrops. Cecrops will present a difficulty the more in the way of any solar theory; but Cecrops,[183] like all founders or supposed founders of states, has something in common with Noah. Like Saturn and Janus in Italy, Cecrops was said to have brought the population of Attica into cities, to have given them laws, taught them the worship of the idols, planted the olive, and finally, was represented as half man, half serpent.[184]
To return to Janus. Before concluding I must note that Janus is called Eanus by Cicero, which may perhaps have analogy with “Hea and Hoa” ([ch. ix.], and with Eannes and “Oannes,” although Cicero derives it from “eundo.”
Janus was also called “consivius a conserendo,” because he presided over generation, a title singularly appropriate to Noah as the second founder of the race, and through whom the injunction was given “to increase and multiply.”[185] He is moreover called “Quirinus or Martialis,” “because he presided over war,” which is precisely the aspect under which it is the original and main purpose of this dissertation to consider Noah; and here I think I am entitled to urge, that if I have succeeded on other grounds in showing that Nin, Hoa, Janus, &c., represented Noah, then that these epithets, “Quirinus,” “Martialis,” “King of Battle,” &c., can only be applied to him whose conquests were bloodless in the sense of controlling and regulating war.[186] In connection with this title of “Martialis,” as applied to Janus—and, by the by, all the traditions concerning him are altogether peaceful and bloodless—it will be remembered that his temple was open in war and shut in peace, and closed for the third and last time at the moment of the birth of our Lord.
His name was also invoked first in religious ceremonies, “because, as presiding over armies,” &c., through him only could prayers reach the immortal gods. Is not this a reminiscence of the communications of the Almighty to man through Noah?
IV. Ogyges and Deucalion.—I might pass over these traditions of Noah, since, having reference only to the fact of the Deluge and the personality of Noah, they will not furnish matter for the special purpose of this inquiry; but on these grounds the investigation may be justified, and moreover seems necessary, for the completion of this chapter, and to indicate the independent source and derivation of the classical tradition.
It appears to me manifest that the deluges of Ogyges and Deucalion were neither locally historical nor partial deluges, but merely the reminiscences of the universal Deluge. Of the universal Deluge, whether we call it the Mosaic Deluge or not, there is evidence and tradition in all parts of the world; though in every instance it is localised in its details and its history of the survivors.[187]