I smiled. This phone call from Sheri took me back a few months to a conversation we had had during an 18th-century dinner created by my literature class, at which Ralph and Sheri Trine had been the distinguished guests.

Sheri had commented how much she liked the hallway window into Wells Gallery. I said we had wanted it so that if the Gallery were closed, prospective students and their parents could have a glimpse of an impressive space that would be available to them. The white classical statue on the ledge was too small, I said, but that I’d always thought a statue of Janus would be nice there.

While the Greek gods are anthropomorphic, with human characteristics and frailties, “Native Roman deities, by contrast, were mostly personifications of various qualities and were strictly limited in their function….” (Powell, Classical Myth). A numen was one of these Roman gods:

“One of the best known of Roman numina was Janus (ja-nus), ‘gate,’ in origin a numen of bridges, hence of going forth and returning. He was represented as a man with two faces, one looking forward, the other back….He came to be viewed as presiding over beginnings of all kinds, and the first month of our year was named after him. In the Forum stood a gate without a building: Janus himself. His doors were opened when Rome went to war, and closed when it was at peace.”

They were mainly open.

Janus enjoyed a high place in Roman mythology. His was the first name invoked in prayers, and he received the first part of the sacrifice. He may have been one of the very earliest of Roman kings. He appeared on numerous ancient coins. He may even have invented money (why do we have the Janus Fund?).

Because of his two-faced appearance, accretions quickly occur and are added to his persona: forward and back, past and future, beginnings and endings, peace and war—and the dichotomies proliferate.

The Chambers Guide notes that “As a God of gateways, he made the transition between savagery and civilized life, war and peace, and town and country….” He also “presided over the initiation of young people entering adult life.” “He looked in front and behind, inside and out, right and left, and high and low. He knew all the arguments for and against and personified absolute clearsightedness.” Thus, as another source notes, he was “a god of vigilance and wisdom, knowing the past and looking to the future.”

Our Janus, then, is more than the simple surface beauty you see in these stunning photos. He represents much that we try to teach at TSU. He is a reminder of our sacred trust of presiding over the passageway of youth to adulthood. Many of our students are adults when they arrive; but others, even if we’re not quite civilizing savages, require some nudging.

It is not easy to convince students of the need to search for counter arguments to their favored positions—or to remember to do so ourselves—in order to be clear-sighted. Janus reminds us of that and serves as a positive symbol of the value of circumspection (literally, “looking around”). Breadth of vision!

Technology, with its rapid turnovers of impressive gadgetry in ever-contracting cycles, has little time to acknowledge a need for the past, but all this easily-accessible information is valueless unless it can be placed in contexts. As Dr. Allen Hersel (chairman of the McKetta Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering) said to me recently, “We have to educate our students, not just train them.” A prominently displayed Roman god from the ancient past may serve to remind us of what we ought to be doing.

Drs. Ralph and Sheri Trine have brought many smiles to TSU. Janus, with all his admirable features, will continue to evoke surprise and smiles and questions and lessons and symbolism.

In various and often unpredictable ways, alumni are the past, the present, and the future of TSU. Wells Gallery is one tangible testament to that, the accumulation of gifts from many, gifts which will continue to engender appreciation.