EDGAR C. REINKE
Meliorem Lapsa Locavit: An Intriguing
Puzzle Solved
Adorning the handsome facade of The Ohio
State University's
William Oxley Thompson Library in
Columbus are four central half-
columns of a piano nobile that
encloses a shallow balcony in three
bays. Supporting the half-columns are
four inscribed stone corbels,
each in the form of a shield. The
figures on these shields depict re-
spectively from left to right the Great
Seal of the United States, the
Great Seals of the Northwest Territory
and Ohio, and the Academic
Seal of The Ohio State University.
Because of its Latin motto it is the
second of the four seals with which we
are here concerned.1
Dr. John T. Mount, shortly before his
retirement as Vice President
of The Ohio State University last year,
informed the writer in a letter
that "The Latin phrase, Meliorem
Lapsa Locavit, . . . is part of the
seal of the Northwest Territory, . . .
We have not found an explana-
tion of why the seal was chosen to
appear on the front of the Library.
A Boston architectural firm, Allen and
Collins, was selected by a pro-
fessional jury to design the
Library," which was ready for occupan-
cy in December, 1912.2 Nor were the
University's classicists, despite
diligent search years ago in the Thesaurus
Linguae Latinae and other
publications, reportedly able to locate
the source or explain the
meaning of the baffling Latin motto.3
Edgar C. Reinke is Professor Emeritus of
Classical Languages at Valparaiso Universi-
ty.
1. Since the four seals are of related
significance in the history of Ohio, their selec-
tion and chronological arrangement side
by side on the front of the Library are indeed
felicitous.
2. In his letter, dated June 10, 1983,
Dr. Mount included a detailed description of
the Thompson Library and its
construction, for which the writer is grateful. For sup-
plying him with needed information
requested from his isolated site of retirement in
Florida he is likewise indebted to Mr.
Mark Schultz of Columbus, Prof. Rosamond K.
Sprague of the University of South
Carolina, and Prof. Mark P.O. Morford of The Ohio
State University.
3. According to oral information
received from classicists at OSU; cf. the brief ac-
count, "Meliorem Lapsa Locavit Puzzles
Latin Experts Also," in the OSU student-
newspaper, The Lantern, Monday,
March 2, 1953.
Meliorem Lapsa Locavit 69 |
|
The Northwest Territory, the foresighted measure legislated by the Congressional Northwest Ordinance of 1787, it will be recalled, affected the vast territory north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi and determined the rules and procedures under which new territories might advance into full statehood.4 Though the origin of the seal of the Northwest Territory is shroud- ed in mystery and the seal itself disappeared in days of yore, William Hayden English (1822-96), Indiana lawyer and statesman, who had examined many impressions of the seal on old documents, with the assistance of President Benjamin Harrison and others at Washington regarded as authorities, made an exact reproduction and described its design as follows: The coiled snake in the foreground and the boats in the middle distance; the rising sun, the forest tree felled by the ax and cut into logs; succeeded, apparently, by an apple tree laden with fruit, the Latin inscription, Meliorem
4. See n. 11, below. |
70 OHIO HISTORY
lapsa locavit, 'he has planted a better than the fallen,'-all combine
forcibly
to express the idea that a wild and
savage condition is to be superseded by a
higher and better civilization.5
It may be added that, with the exception
of the coiled snake, the
seal with its Latin motto was adopted in
a reconstructed version by
The "Old Northwest"
Genealogical Society, appearing on the title
page of the Society's Quarterly periodical
during its years of publica-
tion from 1898 until 1912.6
The present paper (1) finds the source
of the Latin motto in the
Great Seal of South Carolina, (2)
accounts, with reasonable certainty,
for its adoption into the seal of the
Northwest Territory, (3) demon-
strates that the translation by Mr.
English is doubly incorrect, and
(4) in an epilogue offers the
enthusiastic tyro a moral cliche applicable
to all scholarship.
On April 2, 1776, more than a decade
prior to the legislation of the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the General
Assembly of the Pro-
vincial Congress of South Carolina
authorized its president and
commander-in-chief, John Rutledge, to
see to the making of a perma-
nent Great Seal of South Carolina.7
Accordingly, after the Declara-
tion of Independence, a design prepared
by William Henry Drayton
(1742-79) of Charleston, a member of the
Privy Council, was officially
accepted and submitted to an artist in
Charleston for engraving.8
In his Memoirs of the American
Revolution, a revision of his fa-
ther's Memoirs, John Drayton
(1766-1822), Governor of South Caro-
lina and son of William Henry Drayton,
describes the obverse side of
the seal as quoted:
ARMS. A Palmetto-tree growing on the
sea-shore, erect; at its base, a torn-up
oak-tree, its branches lopped off,
prostrate; both proper. Just below the
branches of the Palmetto, two shields,
pendent; one of them, on the dexter
side is inscribed March 26-the
other, on the sinister side July 4. Twelve
Spears, proper, are bound crosswise
to the stem of the Palmetto, their points
raised; the band uniting them together,
bearing the inscription QUIS SE-
PARABIT. Under the prostrate Oak, is
inscribed Meliorem Lapsa Locavit;
below which, appears in large figures
1776. At the Summit of the Exergue,
5. Charles B. Galbreath, History of
Ohio, 5 vols. (Chicago, 1925), 1:553, where the
author adds that the first mention of
the seal's use is found in Gov. Arthur St. Clair's
Proclamation of July 26, 1788, as first
governor of the Northwest Territory.
6. The Quarterly has been bound
in fifteen volumes.
7. George Earlie Shankle, State
Names, Flags, Seals, Songs, Birds, Flowers, and
Other Symbols (Westport, Conn., 1938; repr. 1970), 166.
8. John Drayton, Memoirs of the
American Revolution ..., 2 vols. (Charleston,
S.C., 1821), l:ix, 373, and 375.
Meliorem Lapsa Locavit 71 |
|
are the words South-Carolina; and at the bottom of the same, ANIMIS OPIBUSQUE PARATI.9 According to Governor Drayton the seal was designed after the military fort on Sullivan's Island off Charleston Bay had defeated the British fleet in a battle fought on June 28, 1776. As explanation of the seal's devices Drayton further says: The Palmetto-tree on the Sea-shore, represents the fort on Sullivan's Island; the shields bearing March 26 and July 4, allude to the Constitution of South- Carolina, which was ratified on the first of those days; and to the Declara- tion of Independence, which was made by the Continental Congress, on the last of them. The twelve Spears, represent the twelve States, which first ac- ceded to the Union. The dead Oak-tree, alludes to the British fleet, as being constructed of oak timbers-and it is prostrate under the Palmetto-tree, be- cause, the fort, constructed of that tree, defeated the British fleet; hence, the inscription of Meliorem Lapsa Locavit, is appropriately placed under- neath it: under which, 1776 is in large figures-alluding to the year the Con- stitution for South-Carolina was passed-to the battle fought at Sullivan's
9. Ibid., 374; for the tag, ANIMIS OPIBUSQUE PARATI, Vergil Aen. 2.799. Ac- cording to Drayton the reverse of the seal was supposedly designed by Arthur Mid- dleton, Charlestonian signer of the Declaration of Independence. |
72 OHIO HISTORY
Island-to the Declaration of
Independence-and, to the year, when the
Seal was ordered to be made.10
In view of the foregoing it should
become readily apparent that the
symbol of a thriving tree sprung from
the supine trunk of a dead oak
with Latin motto beneath was borrowed by
the Northwest Ordi-
nance of 1787 and inserted into the
Great Seal of its legislated North-
west Territory. At first blush this may
seem preposterous. For who
would associate South Carolina with the
framing of the Northwest
Ordinance? As a matter of fact, however,
the authorship of the Ordi-
nance itself has still not been firmly
established. Credit for devising
it, at least in part, has been assigned
by their respective supporters to
the Rev. Manasseh Cutler and Gen. Rufus
Putnam, both of Massa-
chusetts and Ohio, to Rufus King, lawyer
and statesman from Massa-
chusetts and New York, to Thomas
Jefferson as Governor of Virginia,
and particularly to Nathan Dane, legal
expert from Massachusetts.
Daniel Webster in two of his speeches
gave to Nathan Dane actually
the entire credit for framing the
Ordinance. 11
That South Carolina was instrumental in
the designing of the
Northwest Territory's Great Seal is
further evidenced by a fortuitous
statement made by Dane in his
multi-volume work, Abridgment of the
Laws, namely that in the authorship of the Ordinance he was
"as-
sisted almost solely by Mr. C.
Pinckney."12 This startling revelation
singles out the Charlestonian Charles
Pinckney (1758-1824), distin-
guished delegate at the Federal
Constitutional Convention of 1787,
later three-time Governor of South
Carolina, and self-trained classi-
cist, as the likely connecting link
between the two Great Seals.
The association of the South with the
Northwest Territory can be
explained. For in Colonial times not
only Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and New York, but also Virginia had laid
claim to territory north of
the Ohio River, which they did not
relinquish until 1784 or even a lit-
tle later. Moreover, after the War of
Independence the leading fami-
lies of New England and South Carolina
because of "geographical
10. Ibid., 374 ff. Note the stone
shields that decorate the facade of the OSU Li-
brary.
11. Northwest Territory Celebration
Commission. History of the Ordinance of 1787
and the Old Northwest Territory (Marietta, 0., 1937), 16-29. For the text of the Ordi-
nance, see U.S. Continental Congress,
1787 .... The Ordinance of 1787. An Ordinance
for the Government of the Territory of
the United States Northwest of the River Ohio
(Boston, 1896), 11 pp.
12. Nathan Dane, Abridgment of the
Laws, 9 vols. (Boston, 1823-29), 9:74-76; Rufus
King, First Fruits of the Northwest
Ordinance (Boston, 1891), 409. Meant by Dane is
Charles Pinckney, not to be confused
with his cousin, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney;
at the Federal Convention Charles
Pinckney submitted a Plan for the Constitution that
Meliorem Lapsa Locavit 73
trade" maintained their close
connections formed during the years of
military service; and in addition many
of Gen. Nathaniel Greene's of-
ficers married rice heiresses of South
Carolina.13
Let us now turn our attention more
closely to the Latin motto itself.
Mr. English, it will be recollected,
translated Meliorem Lapsa Loca-
vit as "he has planted a better than the fallen."
Several decades lat-
er we find this version still accepted
by Charles B. Galbreath in his
History of Ohio and by George Earlie Shankle in a volume concerning
State seals; yet Galbreath makes no
mention of South Carolina, nor
does Shankle suggest any connection
between the two Great Seals
other than the occurrence of the same
motto in each. 14
Certainly any bright high-school boy or
girl who has scanned and
recited as few as a score of lines from
Vergil's Aeneid would possess
an ear sensitive enough quickly to see
in the Latin inscription the con-
clusion of a dactylic hexameter. What is
present here are the two
short syllables of the hexameter's third
foot succeeded by a spon-
daic foot, then another dactyl, and at
the end the required spondee:
meli-/orem/lapsa lo-/cavit.
The presence in the Great Seal of South
Carolina of a verse-tag
coined most probably by William Henry
Drayton might well be ex-
pected. For Drayton, the seal's
authorized designer, like many of his
fellow Charlestonians, had studied
abroad, first already at the early
age of eleven at Westminster School in
London, from 1753-61, then
for nearly three years at Balliol
College, Oxford.15 His education
therefore must have been steeped in
Latin, if not also in Greek.
Drayton too was a member of the
Charleston Library Society, found-
ed in 1748, an association dedicated to
the study of the classical
thinkers and their significance to
contemporary life.16 Further, the
Society's Ms. Journal of Proceedings heads
its Historical Introduc-
tion likewise with a coined dactylic
motto: . . .Et artes trans mare
had considerable influence in its final
draft. "Charles Pinckney . . . was not only a
great statesman, but a learned lawyer
and an accomplished classical scholar, [who] re-
ceived his entire education in
Charleston," Edward McCrady, "Education in South
Carolina Prior to and during the
Revolution," A Paper (Charleston, S.C., 1883), 19 f.
See also the article on Charles Pinckney
in National Cyclopedia of American Biography,
vol. 12 (New York, 1904), 161 f. On the
illustrious Pinckney family see George C.
Rogers, Jr., Charleston in the Age of
the Pinckneys (Norman, Okla., c. 1969). In the
present writer's opinion Dane's quoted
remark strengthens the role claimed by him in
the authorship of the Northwest
Ordinance.
13. Ibid., 128 f.
14. On Galbreath and Shankle, see notes
5 and 7, respectively, above.
15. Drayton, op. cit., l:xiii.
16. See the writer's article, "A
Classical Debate of the Charleston, South Carolina,
Library Society," Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America, 61 (Second Quar-
ter, 1967): 87 f.
74 OHIO HISTORY
currunt,17 ["The
arts too speed across the sea"]. To be noticed are
the three initial dots of this
verse-tag, which indicate that a first half
of the hexameter here too was neither
necessary nor desired. The
Historical Introduction was composed in
the main by the above-
mentioned South Carolinian John
Rutledge, classically educated ju-
rist and celebrated political leader.18
The borrowed Latin motto in the Great
Seal of the Northwest Ter-
ritory accordingly must also be
construed as metrical. As for its trans-
lation by Mr. English, to whom are we to
refer the pronoun "he" as
subject of locavit? To the Deity,
with lower case "he"? This view,
however, would not only be arbitrary but
would be faulted even
grammatically. For there can be no
ablative of comparison since, as
metrically demonstrated, the final a of
lapsa is short. And reflect that
in each seal the inscription appears
immediately below the fallen
tree: in the one instance the tree
symbolizes the timbers of the shat-
tered British ships, in the other the
felled forest of the Ohio wilder-
ness; from the prostrate oak rises the
superior palmetto, from Ohio's
wild trees of a lawless time the
domesticated apple-tree laden with
fruit.
MELIOREM LAPSA LOCAVIT. Taking LAPSA as modifier of an
unexpressed, personified ARBOR as
subject of LOCAVIT, thus trans-
late: "Having fallen, it has
planted a better one."
Epilogue. About a dozen years ago, while
strolling together across
the campus of The Ohio State University,
Prof. Clarence A. Forbes,
OSU classicist and past president of the
Classical Association of the
Middle West and South, directed the
attention of the writer to the
Great Seal of the Northwest Territory
with its Latin motto on the
front of the Thompson Library. Only
quite recently did the writer
happen upon the motto a second time;
though almost indiscernible
in very fine print, by straining it can
be made out in the Great Seal of
South Carolina, which heads a chapter of
a volume on the United
States Constitutional Convention
published in 1982 by M.E. Brad-
ford.19 This incidental
discovery prompted the investigation of the
elusive puzzle. Moral: Indocti
discant et ament meminisse periti,20
"The untaught may learn and experts
love to remember."
17. Ibid., 87, n. 12, and 97 f.
To be recalled here is the Vergilian verse-tag pointed
out in note 9, above.
18. See text to note 7, above.
19. M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company:
Brief Lives of the Framers of the United
States Constitution (Marlborough, N.H., 1982), 197.
20. Latin hexameter by Charles Henault
(1685-1770), French historian and drama-
tist, who has here paraphrased Alexander
Pope's Essay on Criticism, line 741; Classi-
cal and Foreign Quotations, ed. W. Francis H. King (London, 1904), 137, no. 1066.
EDGAR C. REINKE
Meliorem Lapsa Locavit: An Intriguing
Puzzle Solved
Adorning the handsome facade of The Ohio
State University's
William Oxley Thompson Library in
Columbus are four central half-
columns of a piano nobile that
encloses a shallow balcony in three
bays. Supporting the half-columns are
four inscribed stone corbels,
each in the form of a shield. The
figures on these shields depict re-
spectively from left to right the Great
Seal of the United States, the
Great Seals of the Northwest Territory
and Ohio, and the Academic
Seal of The Ohio State University.
Because of its Latin motto it is the
second of the four seals with which we
are here concerned.1
Dr. John T. Mount, shortly before his
retirement as Vice President
of The Ohio State University last year,
informed the writer in a letter
that "The Latin phrase, Meliorem
Lapsa Locavit, . . . is part of the
seal of the Northwest Territory, . . .
We have not found an explana-
tion of why the seal was chosen to
appear on the front of the Library.
A Boston architectural firm, Allen and
Collins, was selected by a pro-
fessional jury to design the
Library," which was ready for occupan-
cy in December, 1912.2 Nor were the
University's classicists, despite
diligent search years ago in the Thesaurus
Linguae Latinae and other
publications, reportedly able to locate
the source or explain the
meaning of the baffling Latin motto.3
Edgar C. Reinke is Professor Emeritus of
Classical Languages at Valparaiso Universi-
ty.
1. Since the four seals are of related
significance in the history of Ohio, their selec-
tion and chronological arrangement side
by side on the front of the Library are indeed
felicitous.
2. In his letter, dated June 10, 1983,
Dr. Mount included a detailed description of
the Thompson Library and its
construction, for which the writer is grateful. For sup-
plying him with needed information
requested from his isolated site of retirement in
Florida he is likewise indebted to Mr.
Mark Schultz of Columbus, Prof. Rosamond K.
Sprague of the University of South
Carolina, and Prof. Mark P.O. Morford of The Ohio
State University.
3. According to oral information
received from classicists at OSU; cf. the brief ac-
count, "Meliorem Lapsa Locavit Puzzles
Latin Experts Also," in the OSU student-
newspaper, The Lantern, Monday,
March 2, 1953.