Abstract

The project Janus: A Door to Understanding is a research based project geared towards looking deeper into the Janus as a god during Roman times and understanding how his history as a god influenced people of this time period in numerous aspects of life. This project is an attempt to combine many different ideas and evidences into a description that is as cohesive and complete as possible given what is already known of Janus. The culmination of these many ideas into a solid understanding is hard to find, given all of the separate aspects of the gods and how they were portrayed both in public and private settings. The project will be accomplished by using as many resources as possible on the subject matter and finding evidence from artifacts and writings to support generalized ideas and theories of this god. This will entail using archived works and possibly outreaching to specialists in the field of mythology to confirm certain facts about Janus. Then, the information will be analyzed and put into a suitable format showing the different parts of Janus as he was seen during the Roman period. I expect to be able to present a presentation on all the accepted aspects of Janus and show how he was constantly related to lifestyles, religious actions, and societal policies.