Flag of Virginia

How to read it

Section 1-506 of the Code of Virginia makes the flag “a deep blue field, with a circular white centre”, with the coat of arms described in section 1-500 for the obverse of the great seal painted or embroidered on the circle so that it shows alike on both sides, and allows a white fringe on the edge furthest from the staff. Section 1-500 describes the obverse: Virtus resting on a spear in her right hand, point down, and holding a sheathed sword, or parazonium, upright in her left; her left foot on Tyranny, a man lying with his crown fallen nearby, a broken chain in his left hand and a scourge in his right; the word “Virginia” above and “Sic Semper Tyrannis” below. Neither section gives proportions or shades. The Secretary of the Commonwealth says official colours were set by the Art Commission in 1949 and a watercolour, the only official model for flag makers, hangs in the Secretary’s office, and that a border of Virginia creeper rings the seal. Both sections come from the Code of 1950.

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What does Sic Semper Tyrannis mean?

“Thus always to tyrants.” The General Assembly’s booklet on the state emblems says the motto was adopted in 1776 for victory over tyranny, and that George Mason recommended putting it on the seal at the Virginia Convention that year. It is also Virginia’s state motto. The same booklet reads the figure under Virtus’s foot as Great Britain’s defeat by Virginia, and Virtus herself, with her spear point down and her sword sheathed, as a figure of peace after a battle already won.

The woman on the flag

She is Virtus, the Roman goddess of virtue. The seal was adopted on 5 July 1776, designed by a committee chaired by George Mason with George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee and Robert Carter Nicholas. Stars and Stripes reports that the committee found its Virtus in Joseph Spence’s book Polymetis (1747), in the library of William & Mary. Her bared breast was added later, when Secretary of the Commonwealth D. Q. Eggleston had the seal re-engraved because he thought the figure looked like a man; Jessica Page, an archaeologist at William & Mary, told the paper that ancient Amazons were usually shown with one breast exposed, as the 1776 Convention’s instruction implied.

The flag of 1861

Virginia had no official flag design until 1861, when the Secession Convention passed an ordinance for “a deep blue field with a circle of white in the center” bearing the coat of arms as described by the convention of 1776. The flag has followed the seal’s changes since, among them the Virginia creeper border the General Assembly added in 1930.