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But now let the interpretation of the two-faced image be produced.
For they say that it has two faces, one before and one behind,
because our gaping mouths seem to resemble the world: whence the
Greeks call the palate ou?rno?s, and some Latin poets, he says,
have called the heavens palatum [the palate]; and from the gaping
mouth, they say, there is a way out in the direction of the teeth,
and a way in in the direction of the gullet. See what the world has
been brought to on account of a Greek or a poetical word for our
palate! Let this god be worshipped only on account of saliva, which
has two open doorways under the heavens of the palate, one through
which part of it may be spitten out, the other through which part of it
may be swallowed down. Besides, what is more absurd than not to find
in the world itself two doorways opposite to each other, through which
it may either receive anything into itself, or cast it out from
itself; and to seek of our throat and gullet, to which the world has
no resemblance, to make up an image of the world in Janus, because
the world is said to resemble the palate, to which Janus bears no
likeness? But when they make him four-faced, and call him double
Janus, they interpret this as having reference to the four quarters of
the world, as though the world looked out on anything, like Janus
through his four faces. Again, if Janus is the world, and the world
consists of four quarters, then the image of the two-faced Janus is
false. Or if it is true, because the whole world is sometimes
understood by the expression east and west, will any one call the world
double when north and south also are mentioned, as they call Janus
double when he has four faces? They have no way at all of
interpreting, in relation to the world, four doorways by which to go
in and to come out as they did in the case of the two-faced Janus,
where they found, at any rate in the human mouth, something which
answered to what they said about him; unless perhaps Neptune come to
their aid, and hand them a fish, which, besides the mouth and
gullet, has also the openings of the gills, one on each side.
Nevertheless, with all the doors, no soul escapes this vanity but
that one which hears the truth saying, "I am the door."
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