E pluribus unum (‘EPU’), which first began to be used by the U.S. in the 18th century, comes from a poem entitled Moretum that until well into the 19th century was generally attributed to Vergil. During those centuries Latin would have been studied from what was the equivalent of today’s elementary school through at least high school. Because Vergil is to the study of Latin what Shakespeare is to the study of English, Moretum would have been read by anyone lucky enough to receive formal education in those centuries–mostly boys–including the white sons of slave owners.
Those boys, however, would have been motivated not just to read, but to memorize Moretum. That is because Moretum, through a variety of clues, encourages allegorical interpretations, one of which is that it celebrates the sexual intercourse of a single white farmer and his sole companion, his black female slave. Such an interpretation requires ignoring the clues that the author thinks of such sex as rape (as anyone other than a male slave owner would); those clues lead me to think the author may have been a woman.
Illustration of Moretum from a 1558 edition of the works of Vergil available here.
EPU is lifted from the narration of the ‘climax.’ The farmer is using a pestle to ‘mix’ cheese with herbs (one of which is ‘rigid rue’) in a mortar (which his slave provided him–upon his demand to do so) that is in his lap (near his ‘hairy groin’). The ‘mixing’ produces a spread with one color from many (color est e pluribus unus). That line would have been ‘remembered’ (repeatedly) by such boys.
Given that context it is perhaps not surprising the use of EPU by the U.S. seems to have originated as a prank. For EPU is a slightly tweaked version of the Latin of Moretum, with the words ‘color est,’ important particularly to the sexual meaning, dropped. That this was a prank (and not even American) is a fair inference from the earlier (and continued) use of EPU as a motto for the British publication,“Gentleman’s Magazine.” In a collection of its 1734 editions that magazine published a light-hearted poem on the appropriateness of EPU as its motto. The poem applauds the magazine’s policy of including works where “artful expressions gild scandal or smut,” and a few lines later concludes with what is plainly an allusion to the ‘food’ mixing imagery of Moretum.
For at least a century after it began to be used by the US men who studied Latin as schoolboys probably often smirked when they saw EPU, especially when in 1873, only eight years after the Civil War, a law was passed requiring it on every coin minted by the US Treasury. There had to be some still then that viewed it wistfully as a legacy of when it could be anticipated that being a racist and rapist would be rewarded eventually with a temple near the Potomac modeled on the Roman Pantheon–originally built during the reign of Augustus, when Moretum was composed.
If any temple deserves to be built in honor of what Moretum really means (and not what such men wanted it to mean) it would be a temple for the goddess Cybele. That is because the farmer’s ‘slave’ is not a slave. She is called ‘Scybale’ and in some manuscripts ‘Cybale.’ Because of when Moretum was composed the sound similarity to ‘Cybele’ must be intentional and intended to be recognized. Although traditionally deemed a foreign import to Italy, as Cybele became assimilated with indigenous goddess worship she became the goddess of Rome, the great mother (Mater Magna) (with a temple, where her statue had a mysterious (probably meteoric) black stone for a face, next door to Augustus’s palace).
This is one of many indications Moretum is the work of no ordinary poet. That its quality as a poem has been appreciated in the past is evidenced by the fact that the 18th century British poet William Cowper translated Moretum as one of the last literary works of his life. Cowper had mastered both Latin and Greek in a manner few then or now could claim to have. He was also a favorite poet of Jane Austen (though she did not know him personally).
Precisely because of how good a poet Cowper was and how well he knew Latin, by omitting and modifying the clues of the sexual meaning of Moretum (such as EPU) his translation ironically confirms that meaning is there. Undue reliance on his translation helps explain the general silence on the sexual meaning of Moretum. But Cowper used a version of the text that had the variant spelling ‘Cybale’ for the slave’s name. I have thus been particularly surprised not to be able to find English language scholarship at least suggesting she is Cybele. The only such suggestion I have found was made in 2005 by a German scholar, Regina Höschele.
Yet, the sound similarity is hardly the only basis for the identification of her. In addition to the fact that the slave is black and never speaks in the poem (Cybele was known for her sacred silence), the cheese spread the farmer makes is known to have been used by Romans as a vegetarian (i.e., non-violently produced) food offering to Cybele. That is essential to understanding Moretum as a type of theoxenia. This theme of ancient literature plays upon the belief that any person (or animal) might actually be a god or goddess and how recognition (or lack thereof) of any such being as such has karmic consequences.
The farmer curses as he finishes making the spread. He does not share it with his slave: he does not recognize her as Cybele. There is thus implied an ominous prophecy of his future. But there is another prophecy implied by Moretum. The recognition (or lack thereof) of the mystical meaning of its language implies a prophecy for its readers, not to mention those who obscure such meaning by manipulating its language for purposes of propaganda. The legitimacy of understanding Moretum in this way can best be supported by appealing to evidence it has been and continues to be prophetic. It is indeed uncanny how much of American history can be characterized as the karmic consequence of failing to recognize in Moretum the black goddess that is its focus (a word etymologically related to one of the symbols of that goddess).
Stuart Dean has a B.A. (Tulane, 1976) and J.D. (Cornell, 1995) and is currently an independent researcher and writer living in New York City. He has studied, practiced and taught Tai Chi, Yoga and related disciplines for over forty years. Stuart has a blog on Sappho and the implications of her poetry for understanding the past, present and future: http://studysappho.blogspot.com/