haec olim meminisse iuvabit
You may have noticed that Latin phrase on the archway over the metal gate as you exit Cougar Mall to the sidewalk along Calhoun Street. Since it was installed in May of 1968, millions of students and visitors have walked beneath the gate’s ornate spires onto the College of Charleston campus. But it’s safe to say that in the 50 years since the Class of 1968 donated the gate, only a small fraction of those passersby could translate the phrase forged within the iron.
That’s where classics professor Tim Johnson helps out. His translation of the phraseย haec olim meminisse iuvabitย is this:
โsomeday, it will please you to remember even these present troublesโ
โThe quote is from Vergilโs Aeneid, book 1.203, when Aeneas addresses his companion-exiles, washed ashore on the beach at Carthage, after they suffered the fall of their home-city Troy, many monstrous experiences, and now shipwreck,โ says Johnson. โThe speech he gives is an invocation for his people to set aside their current misery in favor of feasting, heavy drinking, and some sleep. It is easy, given the rigors of academia, for students, faculty, staff, and administrators to empathize with Aeneasโ worn-out prayer.โ
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But Johnson says that may not be the end of the story.
โThe most famous modern rendition of Aeneasโ hope-filled reassurance to his fellow-refugees is from the 1939 movie Goodbye Mr. Chips, recognized as one of the top 100 films in British cinema and remade as a musical only one year after the Latin Gate was dedicated,” he says. “In the film, Charles Chipping (Mr. Chips), now in his eighties, dreams about his past career as a classics teacher at Brookfield, a fictional minor public boarding school. His vision recalls among other memories the day of his retirement, when he declared to his students: haec olim meminisse iuvabit. With the exhausted Aeneas in the background, Mr. Chips with a chuckle forever turns the phrase into a celebration of the academy: both teachersโ arduous but often unrewarded care for their students and their studentsโ studious labors over books and papers in hopes of securing the good life.”
On this the 50th anniversary of the installation of the gate, Johnson invites us to remember Aeneas’ claims that mindfulness of the past, even its troubles, gives value to the present.
โIn many ways, the Latin gate is the summation of the College of Charleston and her insistence on the necessity of the liberal arts,โ says Johnson. โIt is a strong gate, standing open, and it is a privilege to walk through it.โ