Supplement to the Glossary of the Romance of the Rose

An engraved armorial bookplate. At the top, a decorative ribbon scroll contains the Latin motto "This is the labor, this is the task" original: "Hic labor hoc opus est." This is a famous line from Virgil’s Aeneid, often used to describe a difficult journey or a great undertaking. Beneath the scroll is a heraldic crest consisting of a dragon's head torn off at the neck erased: a heraldic term for a head or limb represented with a jagged edge, as if forcibly torn from the body, rising from a ducal coronet. Centered below the crest is an Ouroboros (a serpent consuming its own tail) forming a circle that encloses a radiant eight-pointed star. At the base of the design, the owner's name is printed in a Gothic typeface.

original Latin: "Hic labor hoc opus est"