Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant

[1] It was reportedly used during an event in AD 52 on Lake Fucinus by naumachiarii—captives and criminals fated to die fighting during mock naval encounters—in the presence of the emperor Claudius.

It was more likely an isolated appeal by desperate captives and criminals condemned to die, and noted by Roman historians in part for the unusual mass reprieve granted by Claudius to the survivors.

respondisset: "Aut nón," neque post hanc vócem quasi veniá datá quisquam dímicáre vellet, diú cúnctátus an omnés igní ferróque absúmeret, tandem é séde suá prósiluit ac per ambitum lacús nón sine foedá vacillátióne discurréns partim minandó partim adhortandó ad pugnam compulit.

Hóc spectáculó classis Sicula et Rhodia concurrérunt, duodénárum trirémium singulae...[2]Even when he [Claudius] was on the point of letting out the water from Lake Fucinus he gave a sham sea-fight first.

At this performance a Sicilian and a Rhodian fleet engaged, each numbering twelve triremes...[2]The same incident is described in the writings of Cassius Dio, a Roman consul and historian who wrote in Greek.

In Book 60 of his Roman History he states: Claudius conceived the desire to exhibit a naval battle on a certain lake; so, after building a wooden wall around it and erecting stands, he assembled an enormous multitude.

Claudius and Nero were arrayed in military garb, while Agrippina wore a beautiful chlamys woven with threads of gold, and the rest of the spectators whatever pleased their fancy.

[10] Karl Ludwig Roth returned to the better quality manuscripts for his 1857 edition—chiefly the ninth-century Codex Memmianus, the oldest known extant version of Suetonius' work[5][11]—and corrected Claudius' reported response to "Aut nōn".

[5] John C. Rolfe notes both responses, describing them as "one of Claudius' feeble jokes, which the combatants pretended to understand as meaning that they need not risk their lives in battle".

[5] Basil Kennett, writing in 1820, describes the "Avete vos" response as a cruel jest: "[W]hen they would gladly have interpreted it as an act of favour, and a grant of their lives, he soon gave them to understand that it proceeded from the contrary principle of barbarous cruelty, and insensibility.

He also on at least one occasion participated in a wild animal hunt himself according to Pliny the Elder, setting out with the Praetorian cohorts to fight a killer whale which was trapped in the harbor of Ostia.

The naumachia (also called navalia proelia by the Romans) was one of the latter, a large-scale and bloody spectacular combative event taking place on many ships and held in large lakes or flooded arenas.

[20][21] Julius Caesar held an event with 6,000 naumachiarii in the lesser Codeta, a marshy area by the Tiber,[22] to celebrate his fourth victory to be honored by triumph.

The project, which took eleven years to complete and employed 30,000 men,[27] included the leveling of a hill top and the construction of a 3-mile (4.8 km) tunnel between the lake and the river Liri (Lat.

According to Tacitus (writing around 50 years after the event): Claudius equipped triremes, quadriremes, and nineteen thousand combatants: the lists he surrounded with rafts, so as to leave no unauthorized points of escape, but reserved space enough in the centre to display the vigour of the rowing, the arts of the helmsmen, the impetus of the galleys, and the usual incidents of an engagement.

On the rafts were stationed companies and squadrons of the praetorian cohorts, covered by a breastwork from which to operate their catapults and ballistae: the rest of the lake was occupied by marines with decked vessels.

The shores, the hills, the mountain-crests, formed a kind of theatre, soon filled by an untold multitude, attracted from the neighbouring towns, and in part from the capital itself, by curiosity or by respect for the sovereign.

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.

[33] Following a review of the source material related to the AD 52 naumachia, Leon observes[21] that the fighters were not gladiators but were convicted criminals sentenced to death.

As well as taking root in modern conceptions of Roman customs, the phrase has passed into contemporary culture, including use by military pilots such as John Lerew,[36][37][38] two unrelated World War II films entitled Morituri (released 1948 and 1965),[39][40] an episode of M*A*S*H entitled "Peace on Us", the French comic book Asterix by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, a Marvel comic of the 1980s called Strikeforce: Morituri that focused on superheroes who were inevitably going to die, the Adventure Time episode "Morituri Te Salutamus", a set of one-act plays of the 1890s by Hermann Sudermann, Joseph Conrad's canonical 1902 novel Heart of Darkness,[41] James Joyce's novel Ulysses,[42] spoken by the main antagonist, Mr. Brown, shortly before his death in Agatha Christie's 1922 novel The Secret Adversary, as well as mentioned in the epilogue of Christie's book A Caribbean Mystery (1964), in popular music of the 1980s,[43] as well as music in video games,[44] in the paper title of peer-reviewed medical research,[45] in a political maiden speech,[46] market commentary during 2008 global financial crisis[47] and in modern art,[48] fiction,[49] non-fiction and poetry[50] related to the Roman period.