Janus Janus In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus (; ("Iānus"), ) is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. It is conventionally thought that the month of January is named for Janus (Ianuarius), but according to ancient Roman farmers' almanacs Juno was the tutelary deity of the month. Janus presided over the beginning and ending of conflict, and hence war and peace. The gates of a building in Rome named after him (not a temple, as it
Gates of Alexander Jews" contains two relevant passages, one giving the ancestry of Scythians as descendants of Magog son of Japheth, and another that refers to the Caspian Gates being breached by Scythians allied to Tiberius during the Armenian War. The Gates occur in later versions of the "Alexander Romance" of Pseudo-Callisthenes, in the interpolated chapter on the "Unclean Nations" (8th century). This version locates the gates between two mountains called the "Breasts of the North" (). The mountains are initially 18 feet apart and the pass is rather wide, but Alexander's prayers to God causes the mountains to draw nearer, thus narrowing