‘veteris non inscius œvi’ – ‘one who is not unacquainted with the history of the past’

The motto of the Royal Australian Historical Society is taken from line eleven of book XV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It was proposed in 1901 by the Rev William Henry Hazell Yarrington a Councillor of the Society from 1901 to 1918, President in 1903 and 1910, and a Fellow from 1920 until his death three years later.