‘Everyone loves you on your deathbed’ (omnes te moriturum amant), or so says the inscription on the fictional Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, seen just before the closing credits of tonight’s episode of House on Fox.
As my wife pointed out, this bears an uncanny resemblance to that familiar gladiatorial phrase, morituri te salutamus. (EDIT: Keen readers have pointed toward the correct form: ‘have imperator, morituri te salutant,’ which comes from Suetonius, 5. 21.)
We think director/star Hugh Laurie was having a bit of a laugh.
UPDATE: My wife tells me that a commenter at the AV Club claimed this to be the motto of the Cambridge Footlights, but the internet tells me their motto is ‘ars celare artem est’, a version of a common theme (compare Quintilian, Inst. Or. 1.10, ‘ea prima [ars] est, ne ars esse videatur’).
Searching today, I’m delighted to see that my translation ‘everyone loves you on your deathbed,’ has cropped up in a few places around the web.
Does anyone have any real insight on the phrase’s inclusion in the show?
INTERPRETATION: Now that I reckon most people have seen the episode I’ll tell you what I think. This is House, and so we should be a little cynical in our reading. TE MORITVRVM means (literally) ‘you being about to die,’ and while my translation (‘on your deathbed’) was called poetic on Wikipedia, all translation should be. The ultimate judge in translation should be sense wedded with style. How do you say in English what the Latin said, in the way the Latin said it? I gave a colloquial translation, but what does the context of the episode tell us about sense?
Throughout the episode various of the characters derived great pleasure from tormenting others. House and the dying Classics professor from Princeton trading barbs and cutting insights, Taub and Foreman digging into one another’s pasts or trading physical blows, Wilson and 13 extracting ‘truths’ and issuing humiliating dares, the boy pinching his baby sister. I think much of this depends on the English idiom which I suspect is behind the phrase, namely the metaphorical use of ‘dying’ and ‘killing’. Everyone takes pleasure when you are on the verge of death, metaphorically or not. They enjoy watching you squirm.
That was the entertainment, and the common theme. But in the literal sense, and seen in the episode’s more serious counterpoint, House connected with the dying Classics professor, and though he maintained his shell for much of the exchange, showed his humanity, encouraged him to express his love—however distantly— to his estranged daughter, opened his own soul, and apologized for not taking his case. He connected with him, eased his pain, and waited with him while he died.
If House is capable of doing that, everyone is. Death humanizes all of us. And when the missing baby, feared dead, was reunited with her family by Dr. Cuddy, there never was a more perfect image of joy.
It’s morituri te salutant, and, this might point to a near ending of the series.
Thanks for the correction. It couldn’t have come from a higher authority.
morituri te salutant from the “de vitae Caesarum” by the Latin writer Svetonio.
The episode is “lockdown,” and all the characters are forced to stay in place, they cannot run away from their situation. As in death. So they must confront their circumstances; they cannot escape the truth of their lives or their mistakes. Unable to hide the truth about who they are and where they are, no pretense is possible and they are exposed for their true selves — and can be loved. Playing truth or dare, reading each others histories, confronting the truth about a failed marriage, watching a rejected patient die — all the characters have to confront a painful truth.
Dear Dennis; despite eight years of Latin at prep school, and with the excuse that I appeared unable to read the end of the inscription – problem telly- I still came out with the awful provisional translation of the inscription as meaning ‘We are all loved in a mausoleum’. My worst translation since the rather excellent and humorous inscriptions in the Paris catacombs designed by Napoleon’s chief tunnel maker. How great to have a chief tunnel maker to exceed Rome’s finest catacombs; nowadays most maniacal tyrants are happy with marble floors and gold taps. My dear and occasionally suggestible Australian wife’s worst received translation was that, and I’m doing this by memory, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ means ‘Pardon me madam but your slip is showing’. Alison is of a nice nature and had not spent years with amo, amas , amat, amamus, amatis, amant, or annus, anne, annum etc. I have no excuse. Bon nuit…..
Hello. I saw this episode for the first time last night (Season 6 has only just had its British DVD release). As a Classicist and House fan, it’s the crossover I’ve been waiting for! And as for a translation, I’d go with Dr. House’s own:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czb5sxv4Uqs [0:26]
It’s Ave Cesar, not “have” Cesar
Hi Pedro,
You would think that, following schoolbook Latin, but the form given by Suetonius is, indeed, HAVE. This word, which is possibly of Punic origin, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary (ed. Glare, et al.), has both syllables short (unlike the ‘learned’ form AVE, with long e (as though derived from the verb avere).
AVE is the popular form today, but not the correct form in antiquity.