School Mottos

I was recently reflecting on two school mottos we have at Berkhamsted: 'virtus laudata crescit' ('virtue when it is praised grows' or 'a pat on the back works wonders') and the beautifully oxymoronic 'festina lente' ('hurry slowly' - interjection: 'Sir, that's stupid!' - or 'more haste less speed'). The latter, incidentally, was the Emperor Augustus' favourite motto, originally in Greek, 'speude bradeos'. I remember delivering an after-dinner speech on school mottos many years ago. In the course of my research I was struck by how enlightened our two mottos are from an educational point of view. Many are about Christian virtues or God himself, very few about educational methodology, but both these mottos have a modern resonance and are therefore unusual.

I remember one which made an impression on me at the time and would appreciate some help on its provenance as a school motto. The original is a line from Vergil's Aeneid (i. 203) 'forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit' ('A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even these things'). Aeneas and his men have been shipwrecked on the coast of Carthage (Tunisia) and he is doing his best to raise morale. In effect he is saying that things can only get better: one day they will dandle their grandchildren on their knee and recall fondly experiences such as this. The particular school motto, I seem to remember, was adapted to omit 'et' (even). It now translated: 'A joy it will be one day to remember these things', presumably now meaning that the things one learns in school one can recall to one's benefit in later life, a sound educational objective and a clever adaptation, without doubt. However, I cannot help thinking of the original version and its context. Consequently for me it holds a delicious irony and an alternative, unwitting, meaning that however grim things are at school, one will look back on them with some sort of affection, perhaps in the way that we of a certain generation perversely treasure the memory of a sound schoolboy thrashing! - hardly the message intended, I'm sure. Clearly, too much knowledge is a dangerous thing!

When I mentioned the subject of school mottos to a wonderfully sardonic former Classics colleague at Sedbergh, he reminded me of a favourite quip of, unsurprisingly, the Emperor Caligula, 'oderint dum metuant' ('Let them hate, provided that they fear!'), and thought that would be a lovely motto to have over the fireplace in Common Room! Sedbergh's actual motto -'dura virum nutrix' ('a harsh nurse of men') - is evidently well-chosen!