All things are queer and opposite 3

Janus was the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, thence also of gates, doors, doorways, endings, and time. He was often represented with two heads, facing in opposite directions, generally east and west (above). Symbolically they were thought to look simultaneously into the future and the past, back at the last year and forward at the new.

This interpretation of Janus as the god of beginning and end, of past and future, and of transition, was explained etymologically: Ovid (Fasti, I.126–127), Macrobius (Saturnalia, I, 9, 11), and Cicero (De Natura Deorum, II.67) all suggested that the name Janus was ultimately derived from the Latin verb ire (to go), hence the concept of Janus the colonist, to which James Ross of Paraclete, Knocklofty, referred in his Hobart Town Almanack and Van Diemen’s Land Annual for 1835.

As well, it was widely understood from the Res Gestae and other ancient sources that by convention the doors of the Temple of Janus in the Roman Forum were closed in times of peace (a very unusual set of circumstances), and propped open in times of war. The Hobart Town Courier got into a slight muddle over this, when on Friday, May 24, 1839, it reported that “The Theatre [Royal, on the corner of Campbell and Sackville Streets], which has so long and so obstinately remained closed to amusement, is, we are happy to perceive, at length about to open its doors—like the Temple of Janus—to concord [sic]. This is promised to us next week by Mons[ieur]. and Madame Gautrot, two distinguished artistes, who have just arrived from Sydney, and who have announced their intention of giving a Concert next Tuesday. The lovers of vocal and instrumental music are promised a rich treat upon the occasion; and we are confident , that as such visits to our colony are like those of angels, ‘few and far between,’ [cfr. Thomas Campbell, 1777–1844, The Pleasures of Hope, Edinburgh: Printed for Mundell & Son; and for Longman & Rees, and J. Wright, London, 1799, ii.375: “What though my wingèd hours of bliss have been, / Like angel-visits, few and far between?”] the attendance will in every way correspond to the expectations of Mons[ieur]. Gautrot, whose reputation as a violin-player, is understood to be of the very highest order.”

The following week, an account of what took place at the concert took up and actually corrected the mistake about the doors of the Temple of Janus (Hobart Town Courier, Friday, May 31, 1839):

The Concert of Monsieur and Madame Gautrot took place at the Theatre on Tuesday evening last, and as if to punish us for making a mistake about his temple and to vindicate his offended deity, that two-headed gentleman Janus had nearly afforded us a practical illustration of the absence of concord, which we had predicted as likely to attend upon the doors of the Theatre being thrown open, and convinced us that a more safe remedy to have produced any such effect would (in one sense at least) have been to have kept them closed. We were led to this conclusion by a very extraordinary scene which was enacted in the boxes previously to the commencement of the performance. The plot was as follows:— The box appropriated for the reception of the Governor [Sir John Franklin] and his party was one in the centre of the tier, the front row of which a party of young ladies, disappointed in procuring seats in another part of the Theatre, unhesitatingly took possession. The circumstance excited some slight surprise, and when at length it was announced that His Excellency had arrived, all eyes were most anxiously directed to the fair objects of attraction, who were determined to dispute the possession of the Governor’s box. In vain were the luminaries borne before the Lieutenant-Governor—in vain did Monsieur Gautrot herald His Excellency with all that innate politeness which distinguishes the French character, while unspeakable surprise agitated his features—in vain the imploring looks of the Aide-de-Camp and the ardent solicitations of friends—all were exhausted upon the tacit indifference of the party who remained in the full pride of the victory which they had so gracefully achieved. We are informed that there was a gentleman of the party also in the box, who exhibited a similar spirit of independence and indifference to all entreaty. As if to make the conduct the more conspicuous, on the box itself was seen the inscription ‘EMOLLIT MORES’ in large letters, which we may translate for the benefit of those whom it most concerns, into the REFINEMENT of manners! After pausing for some time at the top of the box, with Lady Pedder [wife of Chief-Justice Sir John Pedder] on his arm, His Excellency turned round to a different part of the Theatre, when, after some little confusion, and a clatter of seats, we had at length the satisfaction of seeing him occupy a position whence he acknowledged the warm greetings of the audience. We are willing to believe that some unfortunate mistake must have occurred, for otherwise a more outrageous insult was never offered to the representative of royalty. Had His Excellency left the Theatre, we are quite sure he would have been accompanied by the majority of persons present; but not wishing to prejudice the interests of Monsieur and Madame Gautrot, he consented to take his seat in another box, and in so doing showed himself superior to any feeling of temporary annoyance, which so gross a violation of all decorum was calculated to excite. The vulgar triumph was thus disappointed, and the audience evinced their sense of the treatment by most enthusiastically and repeatedly cheering His Excellency at the close of the evening’s entertainment. There was but one sentiment pervading all present, whether politically opposed, or otherwise, to His Excellency’s government; and if we lament that such an occurrence took place, our regret is materially diminished by the universal expression of public feeling which it called forth. The exception is said to prove the rule, and it never did more effectually than in the present instance. Thus much concerning this part of the performance. We are happy to revert with more satisfaction to the voice of Madame and the violin of Monsieur Gautrot. Madame sings with great taste, but the compass of her voice is too powerful for a small theatre. Some of the tones are exceedingly rich, but as she proceeds it seems to want more melody and modulation, and its great power in so limited a space astonishes sometimes more than it delights. We were, however, much gratified by several of her performances, which we hope to see repeated before her departure from this colony, as they serve to remind us that we are not altogether excluded from the excellencies of the old world. Madame Gautrot was applauded enthusiastically throughout the evening, and one or two airs which she sung were vigorously encored. With regard to Monsieur Gautrot—in his case, music may be said most fairly to be married to song. His execution on the violin is rapid, and at the same time possessing that ease which denotes a thorough command over the instrument. We must not omit to mention, that in the absence of Mr. Leffler, who was to have presided over the pianoforte, Mrs. Logan consented at once to relieve Monsieur and Madame Gautrot from the embarrassment in which they must otherwise have been placed. The audience failed not to appreciate the kindness, and she was led on the stage amidst universal applause. Through the courtesy of Lieutenant-Colonel [the future General Sir William Henry] Elliott [K.C.B., 1792–1874], the fine band of the 51st [2nd Yorkshire, West Riding, The Queen’s Own Light Infantry Regiment] was permitted to be present, and relieved the interludes with several delightful pieces of music.

“Emollit mores,” I need hardly add, is a motto plucked directly from Ovid (Pontics, II.9.48): “Adde quod ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes / emollit mores nec sinit esse feros,” that is, “[Add that] faithful application to the arts softens behaviour, and does not permit barbarism.” Readers of the Hobart Town Courier who knew their Roman religion and their Ovid so well could not have been surprised, nor fazed, but only delighted by the decision in 1839 of the fledgling Tasmanian Society of Natural History to adopt the distinctly Janus-like platypus as its emblem, together with the Ovid-leaning motto “Quocunque aspicias hic paradoxus erit, ” for, as is now wholly clear, all things Vandiemonian were definitely queer, and determinedly opposite.

All things are queer and opposite 2

Two stray references in the Vandiemonian press from the 1830s cast a ray of light upon the imminence of Ovid in colonial letters—and may suggest contexts in which to place the Latin motto of the Tasmanian Society of Natural History, “Quocunque aspicias hic paradoxus erit,” and its choice of emblem, the curious platypus. The first occurs towards the end of a long article entitled “Van Diemen’s Land, Viewed as a Penal Colony,” that was published in the Hobart Town Courier on Saturday, June 26, 1830. That article sought to correct the false impression circulating at home in England according to which a sentence of Transportation was apparently regarded as more of a blessing than a punishment. As a corrective, the author sketched in considerable detail the conditions of life endured by convicts, concluding thus:

“If he forgets himself at the close of day and is absent but for a few minutes, he is put in a dark cell and tried for the omission next morning before the magistrate. But if by some means he is able to indulge in the vicious appetite for drink, under the pretence of driving from his memory the incessant recurrence of former days, of cooling for a season the yearnings after those that are absent, in the fumes of inebriation, he is forthwith visited with punishment commensurate with his crime. But if he fall into the habit of drinking, (for it wants but a beginning) in addition to the slow but sure and fatal effect of the internal poison, he has to endure the repeated infliction of corporeal pain, and the exaction of toil when his wasted and diseased frame is least able to bear its fatigue. Let no one believe that this picture is exaggerated or unreal. Since the most remote times it has been the failing of weak minds in distress to fly to stimulants for relief. Ovid in the beautifully plaintive elegies which he wrote during his banishment, describes himself, even with his enlightened mind, as falling into the same error, and drinking whenever he could obtain the means of indulging in it, at the cost even of his life, to drown the recollection of home:— ‘Hos ego qui patriae faciant oblivia, succos / Parte meae vitae, si modo denture, emam’ [Epistulae ex Ponto, IV.10.19–20]. How wretched then must he be, who purchases a momentary forgetfulness of his condition at so dear a price, and however well deserved no one who reflects upon it will deny, that to him at least transportation to Van Diemen’s Land is indeed a punishment.”

Though the temperance standpoint is striking, this and the rest of the account is not without compassion, and it is striking therefore that the author explicitly refers to the Epistulae ex Ponto, as indeed the compositor of “Quocunque aspicias hic paradoxus erit” seems to allude to the Tristia.

The second reference is more garrulous, but no less intriguing. It is contained in an announcement by James Ross of Paraclete, Knocklofty (1786–1838), of the publication of his Hobart Town Almanack and Van Diemen’s Land Annual for 1835 (Hobart Town Courier, Friday, January 30, 1835):

“I consider it my duty to explain the lines I have extracted in my title page, from my esteemed friend Ovid (I like to esteem my friends, and to have friends to esteem), I mean as a poet—‘Judge favourably,’ he says, (that is I say) ‘of my unassuming labours, which I have been induced to undertake, not for the sake of fame or reputation, but in order to be useful, and as a duty I owe to my countrymen.’ The same author has well described the colonist Janus [Fasti, I]—the tutelar saint of January—as having two faces, one looking on the past, and the other on the future, and he might, I think, with equal propriety, have gone on to fill up the lineaments of the one with joy, and of the other with sorrow, for who is not touched by these mingled emotions at the commencement of a new year, contiguous as it is with the blessed nativity, full of joy and poignant commiseration? The lapse of time is ever a serious thought, while we rejoice at the opportunity it affords us to begin a new and reformed era. Good and evil are mixed with every thing mortal—we must pass over the one as lightly as possible, while we dwell upon and make the most of the advantages of the other. And this is exactly the case with the following pages—the candid reader will overlook their imperfections, availing himself of whatever information or amusement they, at the same time contain.”

Ross’s reference to Ovid’s Janus/January at the beginning of the Fasti is a conceit tied primarily to the calendar, but it is tempting to point to its push-me-pull-you quality, its front-and-back, past-and-future dualities of conditions in Van Diemen’s Land as neatly congruent with the lingering puzzlement over the physical attributes of what was still known as Ornithorhyncus paradoxus. And, sure enough, there he is, dangling intriguingly at the very end of the table of contents that follows Mr. Ross’s chatty advertorial: an article about the self-same platypus. There is a copy in the Library of Congress, so to Washington, D.C., obviously I must go.

All things are queer and opposite

When I saw him lately in Melbourne, my colleague David Hansen, formerly senior curator of art at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, gave me a reproduction of this marvelous drawing of a slightly squashed-looking duck-billed platypus with, looping over it, the neat longhand inscription: “All things are queer and opposite.” This was inscribed on the cover of the first minute book of the Tasmanian Society of Natural History, the direct institutional ancestor (via the Royal Society of Tasmania [1843]) of the T.M.A.G. At its foundation in 1839, the first society chose as its emblem the platypus, originally classified in 1800 as Ornithorhyncus paradoxus by the perplexed Johann Blumenbach, on the basis of a specimen furnished by Sir Joseph Banks—a term eventually altered to Ornithorhynchus anatinus, which means literally duck-like, bird-snouted creature. (Platypus, from the Greek, means flat-footed.) To this platypus emblem the society added a Latin motto: Quocunque aspicias hic paradoxus erit.

Upon returning to New Haven, Conn., I tried to find out where this motto originated, in what if any Classical source, or else adapted from what ancient, medieval, or even Renaissance model. None appears ever to have been proposed, so I made discreet inquiries. My learned colleagues Tristan Taylor and John Dillon, formerly of the Yale Department of Classics, have now proffered excellent advice which, with their permission, I am delighted to pass on here.

Quocunque aspicias hic paradoxus erit is certainly not a Classical quotation. Only one ancient author, the Augustan poet Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17/18), is known to have combined the words “quocunque aspicias” or “quocunque aspiceres,” and he used the phrase twice in describing Tomis, from A.D. 8 his bleak place of exile in Scythia Minor on the Black Sea (modern Rumania): “quocunque aspicio nihil est, nisi Pontus et aer / fluctibus hic tumidus, nubibus ille minax,” that is, “In whatever direction I look, there is nothing except sea and air, one swollen with waves, the other menacing with clouds” (Tristia, 1.2.23–24), and “quocumque aspicias, campi cultore carentes / vastaque quae nemo vindicat arva iacent,” that is, “in whatever direction you look, fields lie lacking cultivation and vast fields no one claims” (Epistulae ex Ponto, 1.3.55–56). If the Tasmanian Society of Natural History composed its motto as a conscious allusion to Ovid—and the Vandiemonian setting might indeed suggest logical, if rather gloomy grounds for alluding to Tomis—they did it very well indeed, because Quocunque aspicias hic paradoxus erit parses in elegiac meter; specifically as the second line of a carefully crafted couplet. The long and short syllables of the motto are: _ _ _ . . _ _ . . _ . . _ (provided we elide the -que with asp-, and treat them as one syllable, specifically the third long one.) This is skilled Latin poetic composition.

As for the translation, paradoxus is masculine, so it must refer to the platypus itself because a paradox in Latin is otherwise neuter, i.e. paradoxum. It follows, then, that the word hic is not an adverb meaning “here” but a masculine singular demonstrative pronoun, “this (creature),” referring to the platypus, agreeing thus with paradoxus. Literally, then, the motto translates as “Whichever way you look [at it], this [creature] is baffling,” that is, from the front or from the back. Smoothing out the awkward English, and taking into account the fact that the Classical Latin adjective paradoxus means something closer to baffling, strange, or surprising than literally paradoxical, a neater translation might be: “Whichever way you look at him, this fellow will surprise.” So who on earth in Hobart Town was the composer of this fragment of Latin elegy, and possibly a clever pasticheur of Ovid as well? One should never underestimate the sophistication of nineteenth-century British colonists’ Latin, nor indeed that of the estimable Tristan Taylor and John Dillon, to whom I am indebted for these insights. Even so: All things are queer and opposite, so let us be gay.