The Saeculum in America Inspect the left-hand seal on the back of a U.S. one-dollar bill. It's a circle with a four-sided pyramid, above which hovers an eye—an Egyptian or Masonic symbol of the divinity who sees all of history at one glance. Read the inscription above the pyramid: annuit coeptis (God smiled on the creation), words borrowed directly from Virgil's praise of the Augustan saeculum aureum. Read also the inscription underneath: novus ordo seclorum (the new order of the centuries). When the founders designed the Great Seal, they put the saeculum right on the money.
