Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/326

 278 The Buropemi Sky -God.

are best explained by the assumption that Janus was the nanfie under which Jupiter was worshipped by the earliest population of Rome (Pelasgian Aborigines?^); and that, when this early folk was conquered by the incoming Italians, its ancient deity Janus and his consort Diana (Jana) were retained side by side with the Italian Jupiter and Juno. Herodian- calls Janus "the oldest god native to the country of Italy " ; Labeo^ says that he was termed " Patriciiis in the sense of an autochthon " ; and Septimius Serenus"^ addresses him in the following verse —

"tibi vetus ara caluit Aborigineo sacello." For thee the ancient altar burned in Aboriginal shrine.

Now, if Jupiter did not conform to the multiple, triple, and dual types of divinity, Janus did. An ancient image of Janus with four faces was brought from Falerii to Rome and set up in the Forum Transitorium. Hence he was called quadrifrotis, qiiadriformis, T€TpaiJ.op(f>o^.^ On a common middle-brass of Hadrian he is portrayed with three faces : ^ he stands looking towards us, a bearded figure with one hand resting on his hip and the other holding a sceptre, while his three visages are distinctly

iSee W. Ridgeway The Early Age of Greece i. 254 ff., who concludes that "the two main elements in the population of early Rome were the aboriginal Ligurians, who formed the Plebs, and the Umbrian Sabines, who formed the aristocracy." The statements of Dionysius cited by Prof. Ridgeway in support of his contention are, however, as Prof. J. S. Reid informs me, viewed with much suspicion by all modern critical historians. For my present purpose, it makes no difference whether the early inhabitants of Rome were called Aborigines or not. I only postulate that there was an early population of some sort and that its chief deity was Janus, not Jupiter.

^ Herodian hist. i. 49. ' Labeo ap. lo. Lyd. de mens. p. 63, 12 Wiinsch.


 * Bahrens Fragmenta poetaruni Roinanorum p. 387.

^ Macrob. Sat. i. 9. 13, Serv. in Verg. Aen. 7. 607, Aug. de civ. Dei 7. 8, lo. Lyd. de mens. p. 64, 4 ff. Wiinsch, Suid. s.v. '\a.vQva.pio%, Codinus de orig. Constantinopolit. p. 13.

® Cohen Descr. des monn. imp.- ii. 129, nos. 281, 282; figured in Mont- faucon Ant. expl. i. pi. 5, 19. R. Mowat in the Bulletin t'pigraphique iii. 168 takes this to be Janus Quadrifrons with his fourth face concealed.