01/01/2024
HAPPY KALENDAE IANUARIAE !!
January, for the ancient Romans, was "Ianuarius", the month dedicated to the god Janus.
Numa Pompilius, the priest-king who succeeded Romulus in 715 BC, wanted the month immediately following the winter solstice to mark the beginning of the new year, which previously began in "Martius", the month of Mars, the god of war. He wished to bestow a sense of "Civitas" upon a people who until then were primarily warriors.
Janus, one of the oldest and most important Roman deities, was considered the "deus deorum", the god of gods, the only one alongside Quirinus without counterparts in the Hellenic world, though possibly in the Etruscan.
With his unique two-faced depiction, "Janus" looks both at the year that ends and the one that begins, representing simultaneously the moment of transition between what was and what will be.
He essentially serves as a kind of gateway, which is aptly referred to in Latin as "Ianua", so much so that the very origin of his name is linked to movement, deriving, it seems, from the verb "ire", to go.
Thus, Janus and the month dedicated to him, at the beginning of the new year, fit well into a symbolism indicative of the unstoppable transition between past and future, through that elusive and ungraspable moment which is the present, destined to die even before it is born in the continuous cycle marked by the passage of seasons and, with them, the life of man.
Therefore, we understand the validity of what Macrobius teaches us once again, saying that "the world always turns, moving in a circle and, starting from itself, always returns to itself"
Persons:
