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Gérôme's two pictures, the "Ave Cæsar! Morituri te Salutant," "Hail, Cæsar! Those about to die, salute Thee," and "The Gladiators," are so universally known as to need no description.
"It was something sinister and superb, this chant of the shipwrecked, the condemned, something like a prayer and also like something grander, something comparable to the ancient 'Ave Caesar morituri te salutant. "When they had finished I asked my neighbor to sing a ballad alone, anything she liked, to make us forget our terrors.
She simply put the things down on the table by my bedside, and then stood there with the air of sullen hostility which she seemed generally to wear in McMurtrie's presence. "I feel rather like a gladiator," I said. "Morituri te salutant!" McMurtrie, who had taken a shallow blue saucepan out of the bag and was filling it with hot water, looked up with a smile.
And if he failed to perceive the noble dramatic power in such a work as the "Ave, Cæsar, morituri te salutant," his failure would nowadays, at least among intelligent amateurs, be ascribed to an intolerance which it is one of the chief merits of the romantic movement to have adjudged absurd.
"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd our court-rooms and listen to revolting details more repugnant to genuine modesty, than the mangled remains in the Colosseum.
Slowly Uncle Chris adjusted his mind to the disaster. "Then you mean . . . ?" "It's off!" said Freddie. For a moment Uncle Chris stood motionless. Then, with a sudden jerk, he seemed to stiffen his backbone. His face was bleak, but he pulled at his mustache jauntily. "Morituri te salutant!" he said. "Good-bye, Freddie, my boy." He turned away, gallant and upright, the old soldier.
"It was something sinister and superb, this chant of the shipwrecked, the condemned, something like a prayer and also like something grander, something comparable to the ancient 'Ave Caesar morituri te salutant. "When they had finished I asked my neighbor to sing a ballad alone, anything she liked, to make us forget our terrors.
Then the major handed me his eagle, saluted for the last time by the glorious fragment of the intrepid regiment with cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" they were going to die for him. It was the Cæsar morituri te salutant of Tacitus, but in this case the cry was uttered by heroes. The infantry eagles were very heavy, and their weight was increased by a stout oak pole on the top of which they were fixed.
Fortune is, in their eyes, a difficult mistress, whose favors seem the dearer, the harder they are of attainment. What a satisfaction for a proud man to be absolute commander of an army which, before the fight, shouts like the ancient gladiators: Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!
Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again not half, by a long way.
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