A New People

The Date underneath is that of the Declaration of Independence, and the words under it signify the beginning of the new American Æra which commences from that Date, wrote Charles Thomson in his report about the US Great Seal. [1]

He finalized the Seal design, but never provided a translation, that is, he never wrote what the Latin was to mean exactly. It says:
E pluribus unum,
Annuit cœptis,
Novus ordo seclorum.

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Copyright © Teresa Pelka
■Creative Commons License 4.0

Wikipedia derives the phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum from legends about ancient ritualists, sibyls, and Virgil’s Eclogues:
… ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.

Wikipedia adds,
The phrase is sometimes mistranslated as a New World Order, by people who believe in a conspiracy behind the design; however, it does directly translate to a New Order of the Ages. [2]

Virgil, Octavian, and Cicero

Direct translation from Virgil has never happened so far, and sibyls remain famed for enigmatic phrasings. The 1894 interpretation of Virgil by Archibald Hamilton Bryce was purportedly literal. The preface for it yet says,
Much has been done both by Foreign and by British scholars to amend the Latin text, and to bring out more clearly the poet’s meaning in the many obscure phrases and sentences which occur in his writings. [3]

We are not developing a conspiracy theory, as Americans would have to suffer a regime in their country, to impose over the world, and to imagine the people willing is not only a little too hard. All regimes have always meant plenty of limitations and absolutely excess discipline, doctrine, and diktat. The last of the three may look good on a bookshelf only, and the story better be abstract.

Virgil yet wrote for Octavian Augustus, who allowed the proscription and execution of Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Framers might have used Virgil to learn Latin, but would they have followed him for the sense in the US Great Seal? Cicero was inspiration to the American republican. [4]

Words exactly

The Latin ■integrum was often used in places where ■unum would work as well, and ■ordo could be interpreted as “more than one, many”. The ■Khanate is definitely a later development.
Ab integro, nascitur ordo sæclorum, could be paraphrased as from one, many will come. The Seal says the opposite: of many, one, e pluribus, unum.

The spelling

There is a feature in Mr. Thomson’s report. His Latin spelling did acknowledge the digraph — æ, the graphemic shortcut for a and e together. He wrote:
… the new American Æra…

The “sæclorum” in the Eclogue has the digraph, but the “seclorum” in the Great Seal does not have it. Differences as these were arbitrary. There was not a language rule to use the digraph or not. We may compare sæclorum and Cæsar. The digraph did not represent one and the same speech sound.

Both æ and ae are digraphs. The real difference is in the way to talk. If we said a and then e, we would not be making a digraph. We would be making two vowels, and such was the digraph beginning. To say a-es for money people inserted a glide, as ayes.

Later, the Latin sound became e, spelled ae or æ. Aeri became {e:ri}. The sound was relatively open, if you compare été in French. People describe ■the English ash, æ, as a “near-open” vowel, yet it combines a and e in speech; it is more open than the Latin e: too.

It was probably the arbitrary Empire, when the habit for examples and quotes began. The differences were not trivial to the ancients, marking a discontinuity between the Classic and Roman Empire Latin. The rule was by the regime that might force citizen “suicide”, as in the case of Cicero. The name Cesar gave beginning to that for a Kaiser too.

Charles Thomson’s seclorum is classic Roman talk. The sibyl in Virgil is the spelling of the Empire, sæclorum.

Religion

Charles Thomson was a Presbyterian. Would he regard a sibyl as an elder, an authority, an executive agency? Sibylline rituals were pagan. They involved narcotics and burnt offerings. The women had no education and spoke instructed by their ancient priests.

■Pär Fabian Lagerkvist gave the prejudice quite an adequate description in his story “Sibyl”. A simple peasant girl was taken to pronounce prophesies in a temple. She had neither the mind nor status to oppose the myth, and depended on the temple for food, clothing, and housing.

The state

Great Seals are those to affirm on resolves on behalf of the country. Could an illiterate and intoxicated ancient girl make a proper pattern? Would and American woman feel promoted, taken to repeat after another in conditions of limited consciousness?

The questions are rhetorical. They are to have the idea spelled right in front of us, to consider.

The words in the Seal must have a sense of their own. They cannot be sibylline.

The thought

It would take a peculiar intellectual discipline to hold age for unrelated to time. If we do not separate age from time completely, a new order of ages implies we could change time — to an extent, yet generally and altogether time, not just the clock.

Reports Wikipedia on the ■Treaty of Paris, representatives of Britain were opposed to the US Seal “until mollified by Benjamin Franklin”.

Do we imagine he told them ■Renaissance came before the ■Middle English, and ■Old English only after, because the framers shifted the 16th century before the 12th, and the 5th they placed after?

What was it — only possibly or probably, of course — that he told them?

Poetry by Emily Dickinson

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Word use: Thomas Paine

There was a man of talent for persuasion, whose thought influenced the Framers. The man was Thomas Paine. He titled his work ■Common Sense — unlike any altered view on time.

If we wanted to render Thomas Paine’s “examples of ages” in classic Latin, we could pattern after a Latin phrase, auspicium melioris aevi. It translates as “augury of a better age”. Our shape — aevi exempla — would not need any augury.

*Seclorum exempla would imply we talk about people of chronological age, as 50 or 60 years old. ■The Curious Case of Benjamin Button does not explain the Seal.

Word use: Benjamin Franklin

Thomas Paine was not the only language user where you might say, there is some Latin. The phrase, language user, comes with the fact that we cannot experience all we can talk about.

Let us read a few passages from Benjamin Franklin’s memoir.
The family had lived in the same village, Ecton, perhaps from the time when the name of Franklin, that before was the name of an order of people was assumed by them as a surname when others took surnames all over the kingdom. — Autobiography

Second names were often assumed after the line of business, the walk of life. The Frankish word frank meant free, and the English Franklins were freeholders.

Some Latin: Cicero

It is altogether natural to learn from language usage. For the Classics, we can compare Cicero. [5]

Language acquisition and learning

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Charles Thomson went to grammar schools. Thomas Paine wrote he never learned Latin from schoolbooks, and yet was able to crunch all the Latin content he needed.

The men began their acquaintance with Latin in the years of life that linguistics holds for those of language acquisition. Each had worked his own natural heuristic for “crunching” Latin.

There is no direct, ancient Latin quote for the Great Seal because it got created by a speaker — where Benjamin Franklin is my favorite suspect.

In Antiquity, things like Franklin’s Latin happened every day. People just spoke, without looking up citations in books.

Benjamin Franklin wrote,
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church. My early readiness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and the opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose of his. — Autobiography

I believe him. I was early with my Latin too, before school, a kid simply curious about languages and dictionaries. My first Latin dictionary, not exactly the copy, the editon, is with my Internet Archive account, seculum p. 786 in the search field ■here.

No years are universal

I do highlight that each of the Framers had his own heuristic, as it is for a reason that people continue to converse for consensus. Misunderstandings happen in modern languages too, and I do not claim the one and only possible way to read the Seal. Consensus by the US authorities might work that only interpretation. Why work for it?

If you are a citizen and you do not know what the Seal says — and as long as you cannot say it all in English, ideas may not persuade — the situation is likely not your intellectually preference.

If you say it is a new order of ages, there might be few or really no people to believe a new order of time, and you are going to be food to conspiracy theories, beside being plain wrong. Me, I do not believe in Franklin or Paine with a new order of time on mind. Time is just time.

Regarding a new order of the world, despite the many stories, hardly anyone would like a manner as ancient Rome back on Earth. This means there could be little trust in a singular power driving this planet. The Roman was bad experience enough.

If some people are complimentary, they never take into account living as an ancient Roman slave or person of no vote. Rome fell short of cash and under many, uncoordinated raids. Everybody around was fed up with them Romans.

The time today is for people to be autonomous. There is intellect. There is no need for a country or actually any formation to proclaim a world order.

With Cicero, our picture for the sense of the Latin ordo may have become people and recognition. Nationality and country can be such recognition.

Written resources

Resources continue to differ in presenting the Latin language, and the word shape seclorum is a good example here. ■The Rudiments of Latin and English Grammar by Alexander Adam, of 1786, page 141, present the form seclor as a consequent of sequor.

The path yet would be taking us to the Latin secus, ■Bailey page 521, where some people might say, gender is a division in the same species. To imagine that proto mom-dad who preceded cavepeople, we’d be going back in evolution before the ■caryophyllales — broad an idea themselves, and not advanced enough.

Naturally to crunch

We may compare the Latin verb secludere, meaning “to separate oneself, to stand apart”. It had a participle, seclusus. Latin turned participles into nouns quite regularly. We may compare the verb applicare, to apply:
■applicatus, applied, a participle and adjective;
■applicatio, application, a noun.

If we “crunch” now, seclusus is a participle just the same as applicatus. A participle can be an adjective too, in Latin and English. If we applied or have applied linguistics, or if it is applied linguistics — no grammarian would have reasons to fume.

Seclum can be a noun just like applicatio. Latin had a few declensions for nouns because they parsed different. Interestingly with regard to human crunching, verb 3rd forms and nouns or modifiers do compare here, again, in Latin and in English.

The Seal is quite natural language. The plural genitive of seclum is ■seclorum.

English today

We have the phrase “how come“, to ask or tell how something has become. The text here tells, how come:

When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation, says the ■Declaration of Independence.

People who have become independent

Already ancients used the Latin seclum for people who had taken their own stand. With the Latin ordo as a principle for recognition, we can comprehend the Novus Ordo Seclorum as A New People Come, where come is the third form, as spoken, written, etc. In short, a new nation has become.

Ordo did not have to denote a linear arrangement, but it also could. Moving through territories, Roman military happened to face local people, some in groups for welcome, and some in battle formations, more or less as here, in the motion picture ■The Eagle. The people are not new to the Roman. They are Scottish.

We can caption the image:
Se Ordo Caledonicus secludit.

Secludit is the 3rd person singular praesens of secludere, the very verb to derive seclum and seclorum from.

Linguistic evidence in Europe

Records for the Scottish Parliament have ■macaronic uses of the form secludit. The uses were practiced throughout Europe then. The Scottish parliament was expected to prevent separation: Newir to be separatit nor secludit.
■The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume 4
■The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, 1424-1707

Thomas Paine rendered such parliamentary resolves null and void, in his ■Rights of Man. It is not in the power of any generation to intercept finally, 
and cut off the descent.

Populus

We might wonder, why the Seal would not use the word populus, if the intended meaning was people?

Paths have happened to diverge, for word sense and etymology. Today, we derive the words equal as well as adequate from the Latin aequus. In practice, adequate remuneration may not mean equal money, and equal money might be inadequate for jobs of different specifics.

The shape of the word people comes from the Latin populus. The sense of the ancient populus did not connote nationality or citizenship. The word was close to folks, and often referred to laying waste or degrading.

■Perpopulor meant to devastate, pillage. ■Populabilis was close in meaning to destructible.

Ancient Romans and nationality

Ancient Romans did not have much sentiment for nationality. Their culture favored status, and that beyond people’s rights. The Roman ■civitas gave origin to the word civilian, but the sense was originally inseparable from the city of Rome. Well, and the city was not as much or often a republic, as a practice at pretending a liberal government.

The law of the civitas had words as ■aerarius and ■aerarium, for residents who had to pay tax, but were not allowed to vote or hold offices.

Ancient Roman living conditions were military regime. Business was difficult. People at large had no reason to believe in national identity. Without legal rationale and just upon a whim, ■Caesars could give death verdicts on anyone within the military range, also citizens talented and important as Cicero.

Cicero maybe got verbally into some politics, but all he did was to write and speak, to persuade about events as known. It is no treason nowadays, and it was no treason then. ■The brutality of his termination denies human rights, about the ancient Rome where Senatus Populusque ordained for people who went watch wild animals killing human beings for food in arenas.

Dignity

At the time of the US Framers, the word ■ordo was the only dignified word for a type of human.
Out of many, one;
Favor to the cause,
A new people come.

Annuit coeptis meant, with a nod of the head, hence the cause. The word might be causes or endeavors too — because you would not seek approval for a petty any thing. The Latin does not require a Cesar for the head that nods, neither would Cicero’s veterans be of following here. The nod in the 10th Philippic is veteranorum nutu in the Latin original.

Aevi without augury as above, we can work just fine without excess reference, for the annuit coeptis.

Translation does not have to correspond part-for-part. In Polish we would be asking how it is you have yourself now (jak się masz), when we ask how you are in English.

No precedent

Wrote Thomas Paine about America in 1776,
The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before.

The Cause

The people who then went to war for America had not been all born there. Some of those who had been, did not have the citizen or civilian status because of policies by George III.

Says the Declaration of Independence,
He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.
He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Place of birth itself does not provide for values in common, and all nations are in fact ordines seclorum, where people of walks of life — secla — have a preferred recognition — a national ordo.

Well, and sibyls were women with just word play at hand.

Feel welcome to read about saying the Seal Latin.
■The Latin demeanor

Endnotes

[1] Facsimile of Charles Thomson’s handwritten ■Report.
[2] Wikipedia, ■Novus Ordo Seclorum.
[3] Bryce, A. Hamilton. 1894. The Works of Virgil, A Literal Translation. London: George Bell. ■Internet Archive.
[4] Wikipedia, Marcus Tullius Cicero, legacy. See ■screenshot / live page.
[5] Wikipedia, Marcus Tullius Cicero, ■Opposition to Mark Antony and death.