Full Transcription:

hoc domicilium anno aetatis nostrae MDCCCCXXX exstructum est ex dono Jonathan Guillelmi Sterling, Collegii Yalensis alumni, gradum baccalaureum anno MDCCCLXIIII adepti.

Translation:

This house was constructed in the year of our age 1930 from a gift of Jonathan William Sterling, alumnus of Yale College, who received his baccalaureate degree in the year 1864.

Location: 241 Elm Street, Trumbull College, Main Gate

Commentary:

The inscription above the Main Gate of Trumbull College at 241 Elm Street honors Jonathan W. Sterling. Sterling, who graduated from Yale in 1864 with a bachelor’s degree, left $15 million (an enormous sum of money at the time) to Yale upon his death in 1918 to build new buildings, fund professorships, and so on. Arguably the most notable impact of the donation was the construction of Sterling Memorial Library, but Sterling’s legacy can be found across Yale’s campus.

Trumbull College is the only residential college at Yale built with Sterling’s money. The architect James Gamble Rogers designed Trumbull College (and other Yale buildings, including Sterling Memorial Library) in the Collegiate Gothic style popular in North America at the time. He took great lengths to age the buildings artificially, which may explain the damage on the far right of the inscription.

Notes on the Inscription:

• The inscription is written in an eccentric Gothic script that can at times be challenging to read even for calligraphers.

• Words are separated by puncts, namely . after a complete word and : after an abbreviation.

• The Roman numeral system is additive, where 9, for instance, is the addition of 4 to 5. Compare the subtractive system, where 9 is the subtraction of 1 from 10. Thus, 1930 is MDCCCCXXX instead of MCMXXX, and 1864 is MDCCCLXIIII instead of MDCCCLXIV. Both additive and subtractive systems have been used since antiquity. Only recently has the latter come to be used almost exclusively.

• The damage to the far right edge of the inscription—perhaps intentional as suggested above—poses a challenge for the reading of the last word. The restoration of the abbreviations Alumn (concluding line 2) and Ann (concluding line 3) is straightforward due both to context and to the proposed letters appearing elsewhere in the script. Traces of the final I of the date given in line 4 are visible in the image. Consistent with the additive counting system used in the inscription, this leaves room for II to fill the lacuna. V is too small to fit. As for line 5, however, the letter following Ade is unlike any other letter extant in the inscription: we see a lefthand vertical bar with a leftward tail at the bottom and a rightward line connecting below its top. The appearance of a high dot at the end of the word indicates that it is an abbreviation. Typography and context suggest Adept(i), “having acquired.”

Bibliography:

Forthcoming.

Editor: James F. Patterson, January 6, 2025

Text: lux et veritas

Translation: light and truth

Location: Phelps Hall, 344 College Street (Department of Classics)

Commentary:

Above the gate of Phelps Hall, the monumental entrance to Old Campus from the New Haven Green, is Yale’s motto: Lux et Veritas, “light and truth.” The phrase has adorned the seal of Yale University since 1736 and often accompanies the Hebrew phrase, אורים וְתּמִים (Urim v’Thummim), “lights and perfections.” The relationship between the two phrases remains unclear, but surely the Latin is meant to be a translation of the Hebrew, reinterpreted in a distinctly Christian context fitting for Yale in 18th century New England. In an illuminating article in the Yale Alumni Magazine, Dan A. Oren supposes that “light” refers to liberal education and “truth” to religious tradition.

Yale is not the only institution to use the phrase Lux et Veritas as a motto. Indiana University and the University of Montana do as well. Some believe that Yale stole Harvard’s motto, simply Veritas (“truth”). As Oren notes, however, Harvard did not use Veritas on its seal until 1843, more than a century after Yale adopted Lux et Veritas.

Phelps Hall was designed by Charles C. Haight and built in 1895, helping to replace Yale’s original brick buildings that faced New Haven Green. The gate resembles a Roman triumphal arch that, with its proclamation of “light and truth,” wishes to sever Yale further from the town that hosts it. Compare Phelps Gate with the so-called Arch of Trajan that served as an entryway to the Roman city of Timgad.

Phelps Hall, 344 College Street (arrow points to “Lux et Veritas”)

the so-called Arch of Trajan, Timgad, Algeria, built ca. 200 CE