Questions are not infrequently asked about the meaning of the motto displayed on the College Arms (see Figure 1). When a translation is offered –usually along the lines of “It is forbidden to be cruel” – there is often puzzlement about why a College of Physicians should have chosen such a phrase to embody its aims and aspirations. In this essay I discuss the motto’s relation to the couplet of Latin verse from which it derives and offer a possible explanation of how the misquotation – for such it is – that forms the motto may have come about. Then I say a little about the circumstances under which, some 2000 years ago, the Roman poet Ovid composed the poem which is its source. Finally, I show how consideration of an accurate text of Ovid’s whole original couplet offers an interpretation of the motto that was apposite at the time of the College’s foundation and is no less so more than three centuries later.
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References
1.
Emslie-SmithD.The arms of the College. Proc R Coll Physicians Edinb 1994; 24:104–13.
2.
Ibid. “The College”s Arms are Royal, Caroline and, heraldically, beautifully simple. They are outstandingly different from the Arms of any other medical corporation in the United Kingdom. Except for the substitution of rue for a lancet, they are the Arms assumed by the College in the year after its Charter of Foundation. Arms of such great distinction should be the pride of all Fellows and Members.’
3.
SibbaldR.Scotia illustrata, sive prodromus historiae naturalis/auctore Roberto Sibbaldo. Edinburgh: ex officina typographica Jacobi Kniblo, Josuae Solingensis &Johannis Colmarii, sumptibus auctoris, Edinburgi; 1684.
4.
SibbaldR.Scotland illustrated, or, An essay of natural history. Edinburgh: Printed by JK, JS and JC, and are to be sold by Dorman Newman; 1684.
5.
The “English” edition is a curious volume indeed since it consists of the complete Latin text of Scotia Illustrata, including its title page, preceded by an additional English title page – the only English in the book. It might be described as Scotia Illustrata with an English wrapper. In the copies I have seen of this edition, the engraving of the College Arms precedes the English title; in the (all) Latin edition it is found between the end of the text and the first plate. In both editions the Arms stand alone in the centre of an otherwise blank folio page.
6.
For example, in the more recent of the two proposals that have been made to change the Arms and the motto (Emslie-Smith, op. cit. ref. 1 ) in 1947, the proposer Dr Watson Smith complained that he could not understand the motto saying:“I had thought the present College Motto vague and impossible to fathom, cryptic in connotation and relevance and without meaning that satisfies or having any medical meaning.” (Letter of 8th February1947 in the College Muniments, Coat of Arms Papers)
7.
I am grateful to Dr John Forrester, FRCPE, for this observation.
8.
CraigWS.History of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific; 1976.
9.
The whole line (correctly quoted) emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros has also been adopted by the University of South Carolina as its motto; once again it makes sense in this context only through knowledge of its antecedents in Ovid’s poem.
10.
CampionEMHanmerJWareSpenserE. Two histories of Ireland. The one written by Edmund Campion, the other by Meredith Hanmer Dr of Divinity. Dublin: Printed by the Society of Stationers [and London: by Thomas Harper]; 1633.
11.
The Lord Lyon’s records contained no information at all about the College Arms before they were finally registered in 1900 (letter of 1830 from the Lyon Office in the College Muniments) nor is there information in the records of the College that casts light on the motto’s origins.
12.
Ovid,André J. Pontiques. Paris: Belles lettres; 1977.
13.
Ovid, Richmond JA. P. Ovidi Nasonis ex Ponto libri quattuor. Leipzig: Teubner; 1990.
14.
RichmondJ.The latter days of a love poet: Ovid in Exile. Classics Ireland 1995; 2:97–120.
15.
ThibaultJC.The mystery of Ovid’s exile. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 1964.
16.
Ovid, Wheeler AL. Tristia, Ex Ponto. London/New York: W Heinemann/GP Putnam’s Sons; 1924.
17.
Op. cit. ref. 8, p 937.
18.
Interestingly, Ovid expresses a very similar sentiment in an earlier poem in the Pontics (1,6,7) again in an encomium addressed to a friend.
19.
AddisonJ.The Spectator No 215 Tuesday, November 6, 1711 (Old Style). The tags, usually Latin but occasionally Greek, that head each daily sheet of the original Spectator were deliberately left untranslated in the original issues and in the early editions of the collected essays. The translation given is from the edition of 1744 (see below). The authors of some of the translations are given but that of Pont. 2, 9, 47–8 which heads No. 215 is unattributed. The Spectator Volume the third. London: Printed for J. and R.Tonson; 1744; p 180.
20.
HumeDEssaysMiller EF., moral, political and literary. Revised edition. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics; 1987.
21.
BaconF.The twoo bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduancement of learning, diuine and humane: To the King. London: Printed for Henrie Tomes and are to be sould at his shop at Graies Inne Gate in Holborne; 1605.
22.
BaconFJohnstonA. The advancement of learning and New Atlantis. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1974.
23.
See the commentary of Pontanus on the Pontics for seventeenth century remarks on the meaning of ingenuas artes which is generally translated (as here) as ‘liberal arts’. Pontanus J. Iacobi Pontani de Societate Iesu in P. Ouidii Nasonis poetarum ingeniosissimi,Tristium et De ponto libros noui commentarii: item Hortuli Ouidiani, id est, Sententiae et prouerbia, ex quotquot poetae monumentis ab eodem conquisita, in locos communes redacta, et commentationibus explicata. Ingolstadt: Ex typographeio Adami Sartorii; 1610.
24.
BowenBC.A neglected renaissance art of joking. Rhetorica 2003; 21(3):137–48.
25.
OpsopoeusVMDeliusDe Arte Bibendi Libri TresFrischlinus N.Auctore Vincentio ObsopoeoGermano. Quibus adiunximus De Arte Iocandi Libros Quattuor, Matthiae Delii Hamburgensis, cum luculenta in eosdem Praefatione. Frankfurt: Impressum Francoforti ad Moenum; ex officina haeredum Christiani Egenolphi, impensis Adami Loniceri, Ioannis Cnipii Andronici secundi, Doctorum, et Pauli Steinmeyers; 1578.
