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LXIII. “A Double Janus” (Paradise Lost XI. 129)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Allan H. Gilbert
Allan H. Gilbert*
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

According to the seventeenth-century interpretation of Ezekiel i and x, the cherubim were beings with four faces, as Milton indicates in describing the “Chariot of Paternal Deity”

convoyed By four Cherubic shapes, four Faces each Had wondrous (P. L. vi. 752-754).

This is repeated later, when Michael in his descent to the Garden of Eden is accompanied by

the Cohort bright Of watchful Cherubim; four faces each Had, like a double Janus (P. L. xi. 127-129).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 1939 , pp. 1026 - 1030
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

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References

1 John Seiden writes: “Nec enim bifrontem potes eum non pene agnoscere” (Jani Anglorum Fades Altera, Ad lectorem). Plutarch asks (Roman Questions xli): “Why used the ancient coinage to have stamped on one side a double-faced head of Janus?” For many examples of coins with this figure, see H. Cohen, Méailles Consulates, plates 18, 44–70, 75.—The adjective geminus, as applied by the classical Latins (e.g., Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxxiii, 13) to Janus with two faces, apparently has no relation to Milton's double.

2 Cf. also a figure in Heywood's Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, p. 571.

3 Is the same idea implied by giving Fame two trumpets on the title-page of Baziliologia (1618)?

4 Cartari, Le Imagini degli Dei Degli Antichi (Padoa, 1608), p. 365.

5 Mentioned without explanation in the note in A. W. Verity's Paradise Lost.

6 Lyons, 1594.—There are other editions from 1556 to 1615.

7 Geniales Dies i. 14.—There are editions from 1522 to 1673. He is mentioned by Ben Jonson in the notes of his Hymenæi.

8 De dels gentium libri sive syntagma xvii, s. v. Janus. Various editions from 1583 to 1743. Mentioned by Ben Jonson in the footnotes to his description of his Entertainment for the Coronation of James I.

9 He says, however, that some think this coin represents the three-headed Geryon. One of these is Pierio Valeriano, who mentions it in his discussion of tricipites in Hieroglyphica (Lyons, 1594), p. 297. J. Toutain, in his article on Janus in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquitis, says that we have no représentation figurée of Janus Quadrifrons. See also my reference in footnote 10 below to a figure given by Rosinus. I have found no recent account of either of the coins mentioned.

10 Pp. 41F-42A (Basilæa, 1583).—Editions were issued in 1585 and 1613, and as late as 1743. Ben Jonson mentions the work in the footnotes to his description of the Entertainment at the coronation of King James.

11 E.g. Paradise Lost x. 578–584.