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
The Gates of Hell The Hôtel Biron became the Musée Rodin housing a cast of "The Gates of Hell" and related works. Rodin conceived that people would walk toward the work, perhaps up a flight of stairs, and be overwhelmed frontally by the massive gates, contemplating the experience of hell that Dante describes in his "Inferno". Rodin thought particularly of Dante's warning over the entrance of the Inferno, "Abandon every hope, who enter here." A work of the scope of "The Gates of Hell" had not been attempted before, but inspiration came from Lorenzo Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" at the Baptistery of St. John,