Ave Caesar - Usage in Roman Times

Usage in Roman Times

H. J. Leon of the University of Texas considered this salutation in the Transactions of the American Philological Association in 1939. He observed that the salute had become widely represented and embellished in "numerous works dealing with Roman antiquities, so that it has become one of the best known and most often cited of Roman customs". It was recognized in lay and academic writings as a customary salute of gladiators to the emperor. And yet "there is no other ancient reference to a salute of the gladiators, and in this case it was uttered not by gladiators at all, but by naumachiarii." A striking example of this pervasive belief even in academia can be found in historian Jérôme Carcopino's 1940 book La vie Quotidienne à Rome à l’Apogée de l’Empire (Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire). In this book the author, a member of the Académie française, professor at Le Havre and the Sorbonne, and Director of the French Academy in Rome, cites the phrase and writes in vivid and poetic detail of the gladiators' "melancholy salutation" as they parade past the emperor prior to entering the Colosseum.

Following a review of the source material related to the AD 52 naumachia, Leon observes that the fighters were not gladiators but were convicted criminals sentenced to death. Their intended fate was occidioni (massacre, or slaughter). The lake had been surrounded with "rafts" to prevent a mass breakout and was surrounded by "the crack soldiers of the praetorian guard, both infantry and cavalry, who were protected by ramparts and equipped with catapults and ballistae, and further reinforced by ships bearing marines ready for action". He concludes that this was not a formal salute, but in all likelihood an isolated incident of a mass plea for sympathy or mercy by desperate convicted men sentenced to death on a specific occasion, and that

ombining the three accounts, we can reasonably assume that, condemned as they were to die, these convicts invoked 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. When he replied "Aut non", they took his words as meaning "aut non morituri" and indicating pardon – Suetonius says "quasi venia data" – and refused to fight, but finally yielded either to the entreaties of the Emperor or to force, and fought bravely until the survivors were excused from further slaughter.

My conclusion is, accordingly, that there is no evidence whatever for the much-quoted salute of the gladiators. The only two ancient references, those in Suetonius and in Dio, refer not to gladiators but to naumachiarii, men condemned to die, and even these references are to one specific episode, the circumstances of which indicate that the supposed salute was not even a regular salute of the naumachiarii.

Alan Baker broadly agrees, stating, "There is no evidence that this was common practice among gladiators. As far as we know, the only time this phrase was used was at an event staged by Claudius." Plass notes that "it is hard to see why or how the phrase came to be used on this occasion if it was not a regular formula. On the other hand, if it was something that Claudius might expect to hear it would more naturally serve in its role as a feed line for his repartee portraying his invincible gaucherie." He comments on the distancing effect of the Latin source and the first person of the Greek source and notes that the interpretation and response by the fighters "seems to be a maneuver within rules governing clemency in the arena".

Kyle concurs that no other sources record the "supposed gladiator salute" in any other context "and it did not come here from true gladiators". Treated as a commodity, they were not elite gladiators but captives and criminals doomed to die, who usually fought until all were killed. When the salute or appeal failed, and they were forced to kill one another in earnest,

cting with some initiative and inventing a pseudo-gladiatorial salute, and then fighting well, these men, despite their criminal and non-professional status and their intended extermination, atypically turned themselves into proper gladiators for a day. Hence some survived.

He concludes that "he sources remark on the incident, in part, because it was an anomaly in arena practice—a mass Androclean reprieve."