Dies agonalis

As the interesting rougeclassicism remind us, in the very much more ancient traditional Roman calendar, today, is ante diem v idus januarias.  It is one of the Agonalia (or Agonia or Agnoium), one of four dies agonales (9 January, 17 March, 21 May and 11 December.  On 9 January the Rex Sacrorum would sacrifice a ram in the Regia.  Today’s dies acknowledges the god Janus, giving name to the present month.  Janus had two faces, looking to the past and the future.  The doors to the temple of Janus were closed only where there was a state of peace.  Augustus Caesar closed the doors of the temple of Janus, which fact he reported in his famous Res gestae about which I wrote elsewhere.  This was probably the occasion of the fulness of time, when the Roman state, so important for the foundation and "culture" of the Catholic Church Christ founded, was a peace.