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Morituri te salutant, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1859), inaccurately depicting gladiators greeting Vitellius. Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant ("Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute you") is a well-known Latin phrase quoted in Suetonius, De vita Caesarum ("The Life of the Caesars", or "The Twelve Caesars"). [1]
- Gladiators were always forced to fight each other to the death. It is true that gladiators fought each other in the arena for popular amusement, but it is not true that they always fought to the death.
- When they were not fighting, gladiators were kept locked in filthy cages infested with rodents, were given nothing but gruel to eat, and were provided with nothing but hard stones to sleep on.
- Gladiator fights were nothing but people fighting in the arena in hand-to-hand combat. Ironically, while Hollywood is usually known for exaggerating things, when it comes to the sheer spectacle of Roman gladiator fights, they have actually done the exact opposite: they have completely failed to capture just how insane these fights often were.
- Everyone approved of gladiatorial games. Even in antiquity, many people actually objected to gladiatorial games, seeing them as nothing more than pointless brutality.
Jul 2, 2024 · The phrase "Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant" translates to "Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute you." It is famously associated with gladiators in Ancient Rome, who are believed to have addressed the Roman Emperor with this phrase before commencing combat in the arena.
Feb 25, 2019 · Nonetheless, “Morituri te salutant” has gained considerable currency in both popular culture and academia. Russell Crowe mouths it in the film “Gladiator,” and it’s used over and over by heavy metal bands (most cheekily by AC/DC, who tweaked it “For those about to about to rock, we salute you.”).
- Etruscan Origins
- Kings of Entertainment
- Armour & Weapons
- Winners & Losers
- Famous Gladiators
- The End of The Show
The Romans were influenced by their predecessors in Italy, the Etruscans, in many ways. For example, in the use of animal sacrifice for divining the future, the use of the symbolic fasces and organising gladiatorial games. The Etruscans associated these contests with the rites of death and so they had a certain religious significance. Although the ...
Roman gladiator games were an opportunity for emperors and rich aristocrats to display their wealth to the populace, to commemorate military victories, mark visits from important officials, celebrate birthdays or simply to distract the populace from the political and economic problems of the day. The appeal to the public of the games was as bloody ...
The term gladiator derives from the Latin gladiatores in reference to their principal weapon the gladius or short sword. However, there was a wide range of other weapons employed in gladiator contests. The gladiators also wore armour and their helmets, in particular, were objects of great workmanship, richly embossed with decorative motifs and set ...
Those who lacked the enthusiasm to fight were cajoled by their manager (lanista) and his team of slaves who brandished leather whips or red-hot metalbars. No doubt the indignant roars from 40,000 spectators and the unrelenting attacks of one's opponent also convinced many to fight till the end. There were cases of refusal to fight: Perhaps one of t...
Perhaps the most famous gladiator of all was Spartacus, who led an uprising of gladiators and slaves from Capua, the leading producer of gladiators, in 73 BCE. From Thrace, the former Roman soldier had become a bandit until his capture and forced training as a gladiator. He and seventy comrades escaped from their training school and set up a defens...
Gladiator contests, at odds with the new Christian-minded Empire, finally came to an end in 404 CE. Emperor Honorius had closed down the gladiator schools five years before and the final straw for the games came when a monk from Asia Minor, one Telemachus, leapt between two gladiators to stop the bloodshed and the indignant crowd stoned the monk to...
- Mark Cartwright
Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant! meaning ‘Hail Emperor, those who are about to die salute you!’ It is a quotation by Suetonius from ‘The Lives of the Twelve Caesars’, where the prisoners performing a mock naval battle greeted the Emperor Claudius with this phrase.
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Why is 'morituri te salutant' so popular?
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How did Roman gladiators salute the Emperor?
Did Tacitus salute the Emperor?
Claudius with their morituri te salutant, which was not a regular and formal salute, but an appeal used only on that occasion in the hope of winning the Emperor's sympathy.
