"Janus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watched him beneath the shade of the velarium pleading the cause of Masintha against the Numidian king. Before him was a crowd that covered not the Forum alone, but the steps of the adjacent temples, the roofs of the basilicas, the arches of Janus, one that extended remotely to the black walls of the Curia Hostilia beyond. And there, on the rostrum, a musician behind him supplying the la from a flute, the air filled with gold motes, Caesar, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... of water; and clinging to this air-filled buoy, floats about quite unconcernedly, and plies his fishing-tackle with great success. The analogy between this Oriental buoy and the inflated skins mentioned by Layard and by your correspondent JANUS DOUSA, is sufficiently remarkable to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... this side of the Corso, and crossed the Forum, skirting along the Capitoline Hill, and thence towards the Circus Maximus. On our way, looking down a cross street, we saw a heavy arch, and, on examination, made it out to be the Arch of Janus Quadrifrons, standing in the Forum Boarium. Its base is now considerably below the level of the surrounding soil, and there is a church or basilica close by, and some mean edifices looking down upon it. There is something satisfactory in this arch, from the immense solidity ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hill-castle, can I choose Companion fitter than my homely Muse? Here no town duties vex, no plague-winds blow, Nor Autumn, friend to graveyards, works me woe. Sire of the morning (do I call thee right, Or hear'st thou Janus' name with more delight?) Who introducest, so the gods ordain, Life's various tasks, inaugurate my strain. At Rome to bail I'm summoned. "Do your part," Thou bidd'st me; "quick, lest others get the ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... wrote Latin, and which needed names that could be not only declined, but used with facility in verse and prose. What was blameworthy and ridiculous was the change of half a name, baptismal or family, to give it a classical sound and a new sense. Thus Giovanni was turned into Jovianus or Janus, Pietro to Petreius or Pierius, Antonio to Aoniuss Sannazaro to Syncerus, Luca Grasso to Lucius Crassus. Ariosto, who speaks with such derision of all this, lived to see children called after his own heroes ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... to generalize what I had seen, by a kind of survey of the whole. For this purpose, making the Capitol a central point, I drove first slowly through the Forum, and made the circuit of the Palatine Hill, then by the arch of Janus (which by a late decision of the antiquarians, has no more to do with Janus than with Jupiter), and the temple of Vesta, back again over the site of the Circus Maximus, between the Palatine and the Aventine (the scene of the Rape of the Sabines), to the baths of Caracalla, where I spent an hour, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... one base and two trunks. Shall I call it Janus, for its two faces? or will Chang-and-Eng best distinguish this dual unit? Sometimes, one, with tentacles in-tucked and mouth sealed, seems dozing; while his waking brother is busily waving his arms for food. At another time, you may see them both folded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the Sacra Urbs, and the herooen of Romulus, son of Maxentius, became a joint church of SS. Cosma and Damiano, during the pontificate of Felix IV. (526-530); the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina was dedicated to S. Lorenzo; the Janus Quadrifrons to S. Dionysius, the hall of the Senate to S. Adriano, the offices of the Senate to S. Martino, the Mamertine prison to S. Peter, the Temple of Concord to SS. ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... conquered cities on the lyre: that I might not set my little sails along the Tyrrhenian Sea. Your age, O Caesar, has both restored plenteous crops to the fields, and has brought back to our Jupiter the standards torn from the proud pillars of the Parthians; and has shut up [the temple] of Janus [founded by] Romulus, now free from war; and has imposed a due discipline upon headstrong licentiousness, and has extirpated crimes, and recalled the ancient arts; by which the Latin name and strength of Italy have increased, and the fame and majesty of the empire is extended from ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... to a height of forty miles, and he says that at the base of the mountains there is a road leading to the South Sea. He compares its position with that of Venice in relation to Genoa, or Janua, as the inhabitants who boast that Janus was their founder, call their city. The Admiral believes that this continent extends to the west and that the greater part of its lands lies in that direction. In like manner we observe that the leg forming Italy branches out beyond the Alps into ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... spite of her harshness, La Briere thought he walked on air; the earth softened under his feet, the trees bore flowers; the skies were rosy, the air cerulean, as they are in the temples of Hymen in those fairy pantomimes which finish happily. In such situations every woman is a Janus, and sees behind her without turning round; and thus Modeste perceived on the face of her lover the indubitable symptoms of a love like Butscha's,—surely the "ne plus ultra" of a woman's hope. Moreover, the great value which La Briere attached to her opinion filled Modeste with ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... salt of the beautiful. I wonder that the ancients, who came so near it in so many ways, never made a goddess of Contrast. They had something like it in ever-varying Future—something like it in double-faced Janus, who was their real 'Angel of the Odd.' Perhaps it is my ignorance which is at fault—if so, I pray you correct me. The subtle Neo-Platonists must have apotheosized such a savor to all aesthetic bliss. Mostly do I feel its charm ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the time of the birth of Christ there was peace throughout the Roman Empire, and the temple of Janus was shut. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... and fifty pages from the printed copy submitted to his censorship. He had formerly approved of the work, and had quietly passed over some of these obnoxious passages: it is certain that Gros de Boze, in a dissertation on the Janus of the ancients in this work, actually erased a high commendation of himself,[149] which Lenglet had, with unusual courtesy, bestowed on Gros de Boze; for as a critic he is most penurious of panegyric, and there is always a caustic flavour even ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... find the last trace of heathenism, of that political mythology which had so inextricably interwoven itself with the life and history of the city. The shrine of Janus was still standing, all of bronze, only just large enough, Procopius says, to contain the bronze image of Janus Bifrons. The gates, during Christian centuries, had never been opened, even in war time. Now people went by night, and tried to force them ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... All the while the town of Lansmere had been distracted in his cause, all the while so many tumultuous passions had run riot in the contest that was to close or re-open for the statesman's ambition the Janus gates of political war, the object of so many fears and hopes, schemes and counter-schemes, had slumbered quietly as an infant in the cradle. He woke but in time to receive Harley's despatch, announcing the success ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ample room for both of us. Sit down, and be reasonable; and let me catch a glimpse of the amiable elements which I feel assured must exist somewhere in your nature, notwithstanding your persistent endeavor to conceal them. Your Janus character has hitherto breathed only war—war; but, my young friend, I earnestly invoke its ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... two other temples, particularly worth notice, not so much for the magnificence of the structure, as for the customs that depend upon them, and the remarkable use to which they were put. These are the temples of Saturn and Janus. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... Home again! Carrie bought some pretty blue- wool mats to stand vases on. Fripps, Janus and Co. write to say they are sorry they have no vacancy among their staff of ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... arms, and forever saving the great Kanawha country to the Union! And in Kentucky the rebels had been outmanoeuvred; while in Missouri the glorious Lyon and the crafty Blair had, one in the Cabinet, the other in the camp, routed the secret, black, and Janus-like rabble ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... provinces, both the judicial and the ministerial. For sense sendeth over to imagination before reason have judged, and reason sendeth over to imagination before the decree can be acted. For imagination ever precedeth voluntary motion. Saving that this Janus of imagination hath differing faces: for the face towards reason hath the print of truth, but the face towards action hath the print of good; which nevertheless ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... and by Perugia's sons And Modena's was mourn'd. Hence weepeth still Sad Cleopatra, who, pursued by it, Took from the adder black and sudden death. With him it ran e'en to the Red Sea coast; With him compos'd the world to such a peace, That of his temple Janus barr'd the door. "But all the mighty standard yet had wrought, And was appointed to perform thereafter, Throughout the mortal kingdom which it sway'd, Falls in appearance dwindled and obscur'd, If one with steady ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... him spent therein;" while to Robert Moore, the apothecary, a sum of L1 7s. 4d. is paid for "prepared corianders," musk, clove, cinnamon, and ginger comfits, rose and "spike" water, "all which," it is noted, "served for flakes of snow and haylestones in the maske of 'Janus;' the rose-water sweetened the balls made for snow-balls, and presented to her majesty by Janus." The storm in this masque must clearly have been of a very elegant and courtly kind, with sugar-plums for hailstones and perfumed water ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... specimen of the mode of building practised by the Romans, but the uses for which it was designed, will, most probably, for ever elude their researches. They will not however, forbear their conjectures concerning it; of these, two have obtained most credit; one, that it was a temple of the Roman Janus; and the other, the Janua, or great Gate-way, of the Roman town. The latter seems chiefly supported by the assertion of the learned Leman, that the line of the Fosse, having joined the Via Devana, runs thro' ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... Czartoryski.[714] They illustrate the mingling of sentimentality and statecraft, of viewiness and ambition, which accounts for the strange oscillations of Muscovite policy between altruistic philosophy and brutal self-seeking. At present the Russian Janus turned his modern face westwards. Alexander insisted on the need of tearing from France the mask of liberty which she had so long and so profitably worn. Against the naturalism of Rousseau, which supplied Napoleon with excellent reasons for every annexation, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the empire of the world to Octavian B.C. 31, and two years after the victor celebrated three magnificent triumphs, after the example of his uncle, for Dalmatia, Actium, and Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies passed under the rule of Caesar. The Temple of Janus was shut, for the first time for more than two hundred years; and the imperial power was peaceably ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... accepted most of the honors (save only a few): but that all the population of the city should meet him he particularly requested might not occur. Yet he was pleased most of all and more than at all the other decrees by the fact that the senators closed the gates of Janus, implying that all their wars had ceased,—and took the "augury of health," [74] which had all this period been omitted for reasons I have mentioned. For there were still under arms the Treveri, who had brought the Celts to help them, the Cantabri, Vaccaei, and Astures. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... of Charles in his period of sole rule (771-814) is Janus-headed; it looks forward and looks back. A true Austrasian, he is faithful to the old Frankish ideal of military conquest; but he gives it a new meaning, and besides fulfilling the projects of his predecessors goes beyond the horizon of their most ambitious enterprises. In his friendship ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... head. "If she's pure, then it's a sin," he said. "A thrice-damned sin, Lee. Have I ever expostulated to you upon the Janus-coin that is good ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... mende, 1200 That Tholomes made himselve, He hath ek on his wombe tuelve, And tweie upon his ende stonde. Thou schalt also this understonde, The frosti colde Janever, Whan comen is the newe yeer, That Janus with his double face In his chaiere hath take his place And loketh upon bothe sides, Somdiel toward the wynter tydes, 1210 Somdiel toward the yeer suiende, That is the Monthe belongende Unto this Signe, and of his dole He yifth the ferste Primerole. ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... scraggy sleepy Hamlets scattered on it;—which, till the morning of Saturday, 5th November, 1757, had not been notable to any visitor. The topmost point or points, for there are two (not discoverable except by tradition and guess), the country people do call Hills, JANUS-HUGEL, POLZEN-HUGEL—Hill sensible to wagon-horses in those bad loose tracks of sandy mud, but unimpressive on the Tourist, who has to admit that there seldom was so flat a Hill. Rising, let us guess, forty yards in the three ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... though the grass did not grow under our feet, it was soon growing over the heads of numbers of the fine fellows who composed the expedition—both redcoats and seamen; and though our captain, receiving notice of his appointment to another ship, the 'Janus,' sailed away immediately, we lost the greater number of our people by sickness. The captain was so knocked up that he had to go home invalided, as did my father, who was never able again to go to sea. I went with him, and we lived for some time ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... length the Roman tribe, the Ramnes, elected Numa Pompilius, from the Sabines, a man of wisdom and piety, and said to have acquired his learning from Pythagoras. This king instituted the religious and civil legislation of Rome, and built the temple of Janus in the midst of the Forum, whose doors were shut in peace and opened in war, but were never closed from his death to the reign of Augustus, but a brief period after the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... "be not deceived by the fascinating Riga—that gay Lothario of all inexperienced, sea-going youths, from the capital or the country; he has a Janus-face, Harry; and you will not know him when he gets you out of sight of land, and mouths his cast-off coats and browsers. For then he is another personage altogether, and adjusts his character to the shabbiness of his integuments. No more condolings and sympathy ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... and your wicked joy, it is a doubt whether Monsieur de Nivernois will shut the temple of Janus. We do not believe him quite so much in earnest as the dove(242) we have sent, who has summoned his turtle to Paris. She sets out the day after to-morrow, escorted, to add gravity to the embassy, by George Selwyn. The stocks ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Euxine shore; or Hippolytus, faithful worshipper of the unwedded goddess, rent by wild horses, and by Diana's prayer to the medicine-god subsequently pieced together into life; or Virbius, counterpart of Hippolytus; or perhaps even the two-faced Janus himself, looking before and after. The finest conjectures of research, though illustrated in the person of the priest himself, could have supplied him with no antidote to ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... were called after the heathen deities, Janus, Februus, Mars, Aphrodite, Maia, and Juno; July was named after Julius Caesar, the inventor of leap-year; August after Augustus the Emperor. The names of the last four months simply mean ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dun and faint aethereal gloom Tempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam A Janus-visaged Shadow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... thus proceeding in the eastern regions and in the Gauls, Constantius, as if the temple of Janus were now shut and hostilities everywhere at an end, became desirous of visiting Rome, with the intention of celebrating his triumph over Magnentius, to which he could give no name, since the blood that he had spilt was that of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... towards them from the other room, and, pouring through the doorway like a swift wave, carried away the young couple who were standing on the threshold like Janus, the two-headed god. ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... l. xv., a Roman history from Janus to the ixth century, an Epitome of Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus, and Theophanes which Muratori has published from a Ms. in the Ambrosian library, (Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... and age backward: is not this the signification of Janus' double face? Let years haul me along if they will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the pleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though it escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... bright Of watchful Cherubims, four Faces each Had like a double Janus, all their Shape Spangled ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... promised hour is come at last, The present age of wit obscures the past: Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ, Conquering with force of arms, and dint of wit: Theirs was the giant race, before the flood; And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood. Like Janus he the stubborn soil manured, With rules of husbandry the rankness cured; Tamed us to manners, when the stage was rude; And boisterous English wit with art endued. 10 Our age was cultivated thus at length; But what we gain'd in skill we lost in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Daring! O Janus! what a word is there? why, my light feather-heel'd coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a light message to a loose wench with some round volubility? wait mannerly at a table with a trencher, warble upon ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... was the protagonist. Thirdly, all that relates to Nemeth and his sons, their wars with curt Kical the bow-legged, and all that relates to the Fomoroh of the Nemedian epoch, then first moving dimly in the forefront of our history. After that, the great Fir-bolgic cycle, a cycle janus-faced, looking on one side to the mythological period and the wars of the gods, and on the other, to the heroic, and more particularly to the Ultonian cycle. In the next place, the immense mass of bardic literature which treats of the Irish gods who, having conquered the Fir-bolgs, like the Greek ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... met with a series of mishaps which they laid at the door of an ill-favored man who had vainly tried to become their guide. The disappearance of Janus Grubb, the guide who had been engaged by Miss Elting during their mountain hike, and the surprising events that followed made the story of their mountain ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... groping through the mist, and made me wish for the Janus power of gazing out of the back of my head to save the trouble of continually turning. The look-out was now necessarily more vigilant than when on the lower shore, as I was entirely ignorant of the coast and could not see twenty feet before me. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Janus the Second was young and brave, the idol of a party of his people—and where was the kingdom in which there were known to be no discontents? He was upheld by the great Sultan of Egypt to whom he owed suzerainty and, if in disfavor of the Holy Father for this allegiance, Venice had ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... soil the tree is moved Which Phoebus loved erewhile in human form, Grim Vulcan at his labour sighs and sweats, Renewing ever the dread bolts of Jove, Who thunders now, now speaks in snow and rain, Nor Julius honoureth than Janus more: Earth moans, and far from us the sun retires Since his dear mistress here no more is seen. Then Mars and Saturn, cruel stars, resume Their hostile rage: Orion arm'd with clouds The helm and sails of storm-tost seamen breaks. To Neptune and to Juno and to us Vext AEolus proves his power, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... JANUS, a very ancient Italian deity who presided over the beginning of the several divisions of time, as well as the beginning of all enterprises, in connection with which he was worshipped; he had two heads, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... commemoration of the freedom and equality which prevailed on earth in the golden reign of Saturn. Some, however, suppose that the Saturnalia were first observed at Rome in the reign of Tullus Hostilius, after a victory obtained over the Sabines; while others support, that Janus first instituted them in gratitude to Saturn, from whom he had learnt agriculture; others suppose that they were first celebrated in the year of Rome 257, after a victory obtained over the Latins by the dictator, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... Caesarion, son of Caesar and Cleopatra, were put to death; and in 29 B.C., after regulating affairs in Egypt, Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor, Augustus returned to Rome in triumph, and, closing the temple of Janus, proclaimed universal peace. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Before returning to the capital to celebrate his triumphs, he organized Egypt as a province, settled disputes in Judaea, and arranged matters in Syria and Asia Minor. He arrived at Rome (August 29), and enjoyed three magnificent triumphs. The gates of the temple of JANUS—which were open in time of war, and had been closed but twice before, once during Numa's reign, and once between the First and Second Punic Wars—were closed, and Rome was at peace with ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... the reformation of the calendar, the first day, and even the whole month, was dedicated to the worship of the god Janus. He was represented as having two faces, and looking two ways—into the past and into the future. In January they offered sacrifices to Janus upon two altars, and on the first day of the month they were careful to regulate ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... by the Romans the "Chronian Sea." He was known to the Romans under the name of Saturn, and ruled over "a great Saturnian continent" in the Western Ocean. Saturn, or Chronos, came to Italy: he presented himself to the king, Janus, "and proceeded to instruct the subjects of the latter in agriculture, gardening, and many other arts then quite unknown to them; as, for example, how to tend and cultivate the vine. By such means he at length raised the people from a rude ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Notwithstanding this, the talk was not other than cheerful; new guests had come to us from the town at noon, and they had much to tell. Tidings had come that the Sultan of Egypt had fallen upon the Island of Cyprus, and that the Mussulmans had beaten King Janus, who ruled over it, and had carried him beyond seas in triumph to Old Cairo, a prisoner and loaded with chains. Hereupon we were instructed by that learned man, Master Eberhard Windecke, who was well-read in the history of all the world—he had come to Nuremberg as a commissioner of finance ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... let's say you are sad Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy For you to laugh and leap, and say you are merry, Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... earth, personified in Saturn and Ops, by whom Juno, Vesta, and Ceres were generated, symbolizing marriage, family, and fertility; soon after, other Etruscan divinities were introduced, such as Jupiter, Minerva, and Janus; and Sylvanus and Faunus, who delighted in the simple occupations of rural and pastoral life. From the Etrurians the Romans borrowed, also, the institution of the Vestals, whose duty was to watch and keep alive the sacred fire of Vesta; the Lares and Penates, the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Whitechapel Murder—a nasty thing, not at all to my liking. The Name of the Murderer—as no one doubts he is, whatever the Lawyers may disprove—is the same as that famous Man of Taste who wrote on the Fine Arts in the London Magazine under the name of Janus Weathercock, {90a} and poisoned Wife, Wife's Mother and Sister after insuring their Lives. De Quincey (who was one of the Magazine) has one of his Essays ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... Restoration. But at the time of his earlier participation in public affairs, and of his composition of the greater part of his historical writings, he was in the very vigour and prime of life; and though it may be that he was "a Janus of one face," and looked rather backward than forward, even then he was profoundly acquainted with the facts of English history, with the character of his countrymen, and with the relations of events as they happened. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... by their activity in assisting to apprehend the fugitive comrades whom they had so meanly deserted, and their offers to give evidence against them, had purchased an exemption from punishment, and excepting also the Janus-faced Chandler, who, by his duplicity, had contributed more than any other man, perhaps, towards this catastrophe, but who now contrived to make even his iniquities count in his favor. [Footnote: As the acts ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... gates would require a volume. It would be necessary to commence with the great veneration for gates in general throughout the north: whether the name of their great god Thor (a gateway) is cause or consequence would have to be considered, and his coincidence, in this respect, with Janus and Janua, the eldest deity of the Italians, which I have more largely discussed in an Essay on a British Coin with the Head of Janus, in the 21st No. of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association. Next, the question would arise, whether these gates have not been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... Janus have I in my keeping— On one side sorrow, on the other joy; For man must alternate 'twixt bliss and weeping, And with the dark is mixed a light alloy. In all its deeps profound, its dizzy heights, Life's tale before thine eyes I can unroll, And make thee turn, richer for these great ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... The Hermit The Great Breath The Divine Vision The Burning Glass A Vision of Beauty Rest The Earth Breath Divine Visitation The Master Singer Aphrodite Illusion Babylon Alter Ego Krishna Symbolism Sung on a By-Way The Hunter The Vision of Love A Call of the Sidhe Janus The Grey Eros The Memory of Earth By the Margin of the Great Deep Three Counsellors, Desire The Place ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, 'Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more.' Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's because we are more our own? A friend is Janus-faced; he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the year into ten months only; it was Numa Pompilius who added January and February. The former took its name from Janus, to whom it was dedicated. As it opened the new year, they surrounded its beginning with good omens, and thence came the custom of visits between neighbors, of wishing happiness, and of New-Year's gifts. The presents given by the Romans were symbolic. ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Time, old Time with Janus-face Looks o'er the sphere, and sees no fitting place For thine acceptance; for the thrones of earth Are much too mean, and in thy maiden worth Thou'rt crown'd enough, and throned in very sooth More than ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... of Christmas: "If we compare our Bacchanalian Christmasses and New Year's Tides with these Saturnalia and Feasts of Janus, we shall finde such near affinytie betweene them both in regard of time (they being both in the end of December and on the first of January), and in their manner of solemnizing (both of them being spent in revelling, epicurisme, wantonesse, idlenesse, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... like Janus with his two faces, looks different ways; it is often treated as if it said one thing, and meant another; or as if it said any thing but truth. Its use, in some places, is to lie on the table. Our humble petition, by some means, met ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... fortunate enough to find an opportunity of joining a large party, and we were thus enabled to divide the expense. The triumphal arch of Titus, of white marble, covered with glorious sculptures; the arches of Septimus Severus, that of Janus, and several other antique monuments, are to be seen near ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... country from invasion. In other myths human heads speak after being cut off.[102] It might thus easily have been believed that the representation of a god's head had a still more powerful protective influence, especially when it was triplicated, thus looking in all directions, like Janus. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Janus Double-tongue," she said, "that you would not be the worse of a little medicine ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... requested to make a Report, and to charge a fee as a Civil Engineer; but I declined to do so. In January I went, with George Arthur Biddell, to Portsmouth, to examine Lord Dundonald's rotary engine as mounted in the 'Janus,' and made a Report on the same to the Admiralty: and I made several subsequent Reports on the same matter. The scheme was abandoned in the course of next year; the real cause of failure, as I believe, was in the ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... dedicated by Numa to the honor of god Janus, for whom Julius Caesar named the month of January. Numa ordained that it should be observed as a day of good-humor and good-fellowship. All grudges and hard feelings were to be forgotten. Sacrifices of cake, wine, and incense ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... Janus, whom no crooked fingers, simulating a stork, peck at behind your back, whom no quick hands deride behind you, by imitating the motion of the white ears of the ass, against whom no mocking tongue is thrust out, as the tongue of the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... who worked at Ravenna a few names have descended. These craftsmen were, Cuserius, Paulus, Janus, Statius and Stephanus, but their histories are vague. Theodoric also brought some mosaic artists from Rome to work in Ravenna, which fact accounts for a Latin influence discernible in these mosaics, which are in many ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... Hereford, and many Barons, Baronets, and Knights. To this assembly Sir John de Bek, a belted Knight, read out the Articles which Lancaster and his adherents intended to insist upon." But what interested us most in the church was the "Janus Cross" The Romans dedicated the month of January to Janus, who was always pictured with two faces, as January could look back to the past year and forwards towards the present. The Janus Cross here had a curious history; it had been found in the ruins of an ancient chapel in the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... becoming of less and less account, when facility of communication has given both force and the means of exerting it to the sentiment of civilized mankind, and when commerce has made the banker's strong-box a true temple of Janus, the shutting or opening of which means peace or war. Battles are decisive now not so much by the destruction of armies as by the defeat of public spirit, and a something that has actually happened may be a less important fact, either in conjecturing ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Janus Dousa, in his Notes on Petronius, had called John of Salisbury "Cornicula;" but Thomasius, in p. 240 of his work, De Plagio Literario, vindicates him satisfactorily. See Lipp. ad. Tacit. Annal XII. (pezzi di porpora), not noticed by any editor of Petronius. Has ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all Johnson's dictionary—let it suffice to say—it was that particular aperture which, in all good societies, the laws of decorum do strictly require, like the temple of Janus (in peace at least) to be universally ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... and bright, on festive New-Year's Day, First in the year old Janus comes, and foremost in my lay! Twin-headed god, source of the year that silent glides away, Who only of the Olympian throng canst thine own back survey; Bless thou our noble chiefs, whose arms have purchased ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the superstitious remembrance of the golden age of the world, in which no distinction of ranks was yet known among men. (Macrob {}, 10. Horat. &c.) The calends also of January were solemnized with licentious shows in honor of Janus and the goddess Strenia: and it is from those infamous diversions that among Christians, are derived the profane riots of new year's day, twelfthtide, and shrovetide, by which many pervert these times into days of sin and intemperance. Several councils severely condemn ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... know I do not love wine. I love Noah when he is himself; but, as Janus, I love him not. But you are merry; bueno, you have ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... was, as thise bookes me remembre, The colde, frosty sesoun of Decembre.... The bittre frostes with the sleet and reyn Destroyed hath the grene in every yard; Janus sit by the fyre with double beard, And drynketh of his bugle horn the wyn; Biforn hym stant brawn of the tusked swyn, And "Nowel" crieth ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... From that which centuries have established, too, we may draw true principles of judgment for the poetry of our own day. A right knowledge and apprehension of the past teaches humbleness and self-sustainment to the present. Showing us what has been, it also reveals what can be done. Progress is Janus-faced, looking to the bygone as well as to the coming; and radicalism should not so much busy itself with lopping off the dead or seeming dead limbs, as with clearing away that poisonous rottenness around the roots, from ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Council, like Janus of old, possessed two faces, one altruistic and the other egotistic, and, also like that son of Apollo, held a key in its right hand and a rod in its left. It applied to the various states, according ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... writer, for in a writer there are many men,—an author, rather, should resemble Janus, see behind and before, become a spy, examine an idea in all its phases, delve alternately into the soul of Alceste and into that of Philaenete, know everything though he does not tell it, never ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac |
