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ROMAN IDEALS OF SUICIDE

Freitag, 30. 07. 2010

Cato and His Heirs:
copyright © Nick Kapur 2000

The ancient Roman sources from the period of the Empire attest to what by modern standards seems to be a startling number of suicides by prominent public figures, and in some cases, ordinary citizens as well. Many of the great authors of the period celebrate the act of suicide in their poetry and prose, including Seneca, Lucan, Tacitus, and the younger Pliny. Famous suicides such as Seneca, Arria, Otho, Brutus and Cassius, and especially Cato, were immortalized and even emulated. From this evidence it would require little effort to imagine a Roman view of suicide in which self- killing is almost universally celebrated, accepted, and admired. Such an assumption would be wrong. A close examination of relevant sources clearly reveals that the Romans only accepted suicide under certain conditions, using certain methods, and committed with certain motives.

That the Romans often saw positive benefits from suicide cannot be denied. Seneca, a passionate defender of suicide, writes that "the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can" and adds that "the best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed us one entrance into life, but many exits" (Epistulae 70.4; 70.14). Similarly, the elder Pliny writes, "the chief consolation for nature's imperfection in the case of man is that not even for a god are all things possible - for he cannot, even if he wishes, kill himself, the supreme boon that nature has bestowed on man among all the penalties of life" (Natural History 2.27). Lucan extols "the glory of suicide" arguing that "no man’s life is too short if it affords him time to contrive his own death" (Pharsalia 4.478-80). For Lucan, suicide is sweet and fitting, but "only those whose onrushing fate is already upon them are granted this revelation: those who will go on living – the gods keep them in the dark, that they may endure to live on: death is a blessing!" (Pharsalia 4.517-20). The Stoic philosopher Epictetus uses elaborate metaphors to endorse suicide: "Above all, remember that the door stands open. Do not be more fearful than children. But, just as when they are tired of the game they cry, ‘I will play no more,’ so too when you are in a similar situation, cry, ‘I will play no more’ and depart. But if you stay, do not cry." Similarly, he later adds, "Is there smoke in the room? If it is slight, I remain. If it is grievous, I quit it" (Discourses 1.24-25).

Roman writers advocating suicide often praised it as a path to freedom. For Lucan this can mean a freedom from fear of death itself: "Make death your choice, and all fear vanishes" (Pharsalia 4.485). For Seneca, life is nothing but "bonds of slavery" subjugating men to the whims of Fortune. However, although "Fortune has all power over one who lives . . . she has no power over one who knows how to die" (Ep. 70.6). Lucan agrees: "It is no arduous feat to escape slavery by one’s own hand . . . weapons were granted that none need live as slave" (Pharsalia 4.576-8). Plutarch has Cato express a similar sentiment when his sword is brought to him the evening before his suicide: "Now I am master of myself," he declares (Lives, Life of Cato the Younger, pg. 959). Seneca eloquently sums up this idea of suicide as an expression of freedom in De Ira:

In whatever direction you may turn your eyes, there lies the means to end your woes. Do you see that precipice? Down that is the way to liberty. Do you see that sea, that well? There sits liberty - at the bottom. Do you see that tree, stunted, blighted and barren? Yet from its branches hangs liberty. Do you see that throat of yours, your gullet, your heart? They are ways of escape from servitude. Are the ways of egress I show you too toilsome, do they require too much courage and strength? Do you ask what is the highway to liberty? Any vein in your body (3.15.4).

Although suicide clearly had many supporters, it was by no means universally accepted and endorsed by Roman society. Perhaps the most obvious evidence of this is that the sources often depict relatives and associates of suicides attempting to dissuade them from killing themselves. The younger Pliny recounts how Arria’s son-in-law Thrasea tried to persuade her not to die with her husband Paetus, asking her if she would wish her daughter to die with him if he were to kill himself. She replied "If she lives as long and happily with you as I have with Paetus – yes" (Letters 3.16). Similarly, Cato’s friends tried to steal his sword to prevent his suicide (Plutarch, Cato the Younger 957) and had a physician bind his wound against his wishes when they discovered he had stabbed himself, forcing Cato to rip the wound open again so he could die (Seneca, Ep. 24.8; Plutarch, Cato the Younger 958). Cornelius Nepos records that Agrippa tearfully pleaded with his father-in-law Atticus, attempting in vain to dissuade him from killing himself (Lives of Famous Men, Atticus 22). Thus, although Romans were accepting of suicide to a certain degree, no one denied that it was a sorrowful event that deeply saddened family and friends. Indeed Pliny, writing of the suicide of his friend Corellius Rufus, declares that he is "even sadder" that Rufus died by his own hand because "death is most tragic when it is not due to fate or natural causes." Although he understands his friend’s choice intellectually, he grives nonetheless: "Send me words of comfort, but do not say that he was an old man and ill; I know this . . . everything I know comes naturally to my aid, but is powerless against a grief like this" (Letters 1.12).

Some Romans in fact, entirely disapproved of suicide. Seneca writes that there are many men who "hold it accursed for a man to be the means of his own destruction; we should wait, say they, for the end decreed by nature" (Ep. 70.14). Suetonius relates that the emperor Claudius tried to remove a knight from the list of the members of the equestrian order for having attempted suicide (The Twelve Caesars, Claudius 16). According to Appian, Julius Caesar, as part of his quadruple triumph of 46 b.c., paraded grotesque images through Rome of his defeated enemies Scipio, Petreius, and Cato committing suicide, in an attempt to turn popular sentiment against them (The Civil Wars 2.101). Evidently, Caesar saw suicide as a reprehensible act and believed his fellow citizens did also. Virgil seems to agree. Although he does place Cato in the Elysian Fields, he relegates other suicides to a gloomy place where they pine for light (Aeneid 8.670; 6.434ff.) Other examples of Romans who disapproved of suicide include the lawyer Marcian, who called suicide a deed of wickedness (The Digest of Justinian 43.21.3) and the poet Martial, who wrote against the practice of soldiers killing themselves when defeat was imminent: "When he was fleeing from the enemy, Fannius killed himself. I ask you, isn't this madness, to die so that you won't die?" (2.80).

Clearly the Romans held conflicting views about suicide. While some approved of almost any form of suicide others rejected it entirely. Most Romans, however, probably fell somewhere in between. Cicero warns against the danger of frivolous suicides, writing of a philosopher who argued so eloquently that death saves us from the misfortunes of life, that King Ptolemy II of Egypt had to forbid him from making such statements in his classes because so many of his students commented suicide upon hearing them (Tusculan Disputations 1.83). Similarly, he speaks disparagingly of a certain Cleombrotus of Ambracia who "had suffered no misfortune, but still threw himself off a wall into the sea after reading Plato’s book" (Tusc. Disp. 1.84). According to Tacitus, when M. Cocceius Nerva, a close friend of the emperor Tiberius, decided to kill himself even with "his position unthreatened, his health sound," Tiberius chastised him, "declaring that his own feelings and reputation would suffer grievously if his most intimate friend chose to die without cause" (Annals 6.26). Even Seneca, the ardent advocate of suicide, cautions against suicide attempted for the wrong reasons. Suicide should only be committed if one has a valid complaint against life, he argues, not because of "that weakness which has taken possession of so many – the lust for death." Seneca fears that suicide is becoming more of a fashion than an exit from truly severe hardship; men should only commit suicide if life has become truly unbearable, not when it is merely irksome (Ep. 24.25).

What Cicero and Seneca disapprove of in these situations is the lack of suitable motives for suicide. It is clear from the sources that motives were critical in the minds of the Romans when determining whether a suicide was justified; certain motives were acceptable, others were not. Thus Cicero writes that "Cato, now, in departing this life was delighted at having a reason for dying. The god who rules within us forbids us to depart hence without his orders. But when the god himself gives a just cause, as he has once done to Socrates, and now to Cato, and often to many others, I assure you that the wise man will gladly escape from this darkness into that light" (Tusc. Disp. 1.74). The Romans were willing to accept the suicides of their fellow citizens, but they demanded a "just cause," in other words, a proper motive.

One of the most common and widely accepted motives for suicide was to preserve one’s dignity after a military defeat. Many of the most famous suicides fall into this category, including those of Cato, Brutus, Cassius, Antony, Varus, and Otho. Thistype of suicide evidently dated back to the days of the Republic. Valerius Maximus records such suicides committed by defeated Roman generals as early as the second century b.c. (Griffin 1986b, 193). Understanding why this motive was so widely accepted is relatively simple. To a defeated Roman general, all his options other than suicide were effectively fates worse than death. If he had been defeated by a non-Roman enemy, he faced capture and likely execution – both unbearable humiliations. If his enemy was another Roman faction, he faced either execution and its attendant humiliations (such as having his head paraded through Rome), or else, perhaps worst of all, clemency from his conqueror. Roman aristocrats, who prided themselves on being utterly equal to their peers, could not abide being beholden to anyone for anything, and what debt could be greater than owing another one’s very life? Avoiding the dishonor of being pardoned was probably one of Cato’s primary motives for committing suicide, as Caesar prided himself on his clemency. Indeed, Caesar is supposed to have said, upon learning of Cato’s suicide, "Cato, I grudge you your death, as you have grudged me the preservation of your life" (Plutarch, Cato the Younger 959).

Military suicides were not only committed by generals. The sources record several instances of ordinary combatants making mutual suicide pacts when faced with certain defeat. Tacitus records such a pact among four hundred soldiers who killed each other following their defeat by the Frisians in Lower Germany in a.d. 29 (Ann. 4.73.4). Lucan describes a similar suicide pact among a small group of Julius Caesar’s soldiers trapped on a raft and surrounded by Pompey’s fleet (Pharsalia 4.474-581). Although the incident is probably fictional, it is no doubt indicative of a real phenomenon. Another example of a suicide pact is that of Zealots defending the Jewish rebel fortress at Masada, who killed themselves just as the Roman army was about to take the fortress after a two-year siege. For generals, soldiers, and rebels alike, suicide was a means of snatching a small measure of victory from the jaws of defeat.

The other type of suicide that appears with great frequency in the sources is the suicide of men condemned to execution or about to be condemned to execution. Tacitus informs us that by the time of the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero (a.d. 65), the condemned had been taking their own lives for so long that it had become customary to allow every condemned man a short respite to "choose his own death" (Ann. 15.60), whereas in the past this privilege was only occasionally granted (cf. Ann. 11.3). The number of men who chose suicide over the vastly more humiliating death by execution is likely beyond count. Some of the more famous suicides of this type include Seneca, Lucan, Piso, Nero’s "Arbiter of Taste" Petronius, and Arria’s son-in-law Thrasea. One of the earliest recorded suicides of this type was famously that of the younger Gracchus in 121 b.c., who "being on the point of arrest . . . presented his throat to the slave" (Appian, The Civil Wars 1.26).

While the obvious motive for suicide among the condemned was avoiding the dishonor of execution, another motive was insuring one’s heirs would inherit. Describing the suicide of Pomponius Labeo, Tacitus writes "Such deaths were readily resorted to. They were due to fears of execution, and because people sentenced to death forfeited their property and were forbidden burial, whereas suicides were rewarded for this acceleration by burial and recognition of their wills" (Ann. 6.29). Indeed, some men may have been falsely accused and condemned in order to secure their wealth for the state. According to Tacitus, Nero had a forged letter made up, supposedly written by convicted conspirator Lucan to Seneca’s brother Annaeus Mela, because he coveted Mela’s wealth. Mela made a will and committed suicide, hoping to salvage some of his wealth (Ann. 16.17). Even in the case of suicide, however, the will of a condemned man could still be invalidated if his suicide was deemed to have had an improper motive. In many cases, the suicide was taken to be motivated by a guilty conscience, in which case, under Roman law his property would go to the state (Digest 3.2.11.3; 28.3.6.7; 29.5.1.23; 48.21.3). Perhaps this is why Mela felt compelled to add a postscript to his will protesting his innocence, fearing that his suicide might be judged the result of a guilty conscience thus invalidating his will. Just to make sure, he also willed large gifts to Tigellinus, who was Nero’s right hand man at the time, and to Tigellinus’ son-in-law Cossutianus Capito (Ann. 16.17).

A third motive for suicide that was widely accepted by the Romans was severe pain or physical handicap. Pliny’s friend Corellius Rufus, for example, "suffered so long from such a painful affliction that his reasons for dying outweighed everything life could give him" (Letters 1.12). In another letter, Pliny celebrates a woman who urged her husband two commit suicide because he was suffering from unbearable ulcers on his genitalia and then joined him in death, calling it "not less heroic than Arria’s deed" (6.24). Tacitus relates how Caninius Rebilus "escaped the miseries of invalid old age by opening his veins" (Ann. 13.30). Tacitus obviously feels this was the correct action, as he proceeds to give Rebilus the backhanded compliment that "no one had thought he had the courage for this." Seneca argues by analogy that his friend Aufidius Bassus, "a noble man, shattered in health and wrestling with his years" should commit suicide:

Just as in a ship that springs a leak, you can always stop the first or the second fissure, but when many holes begin to open and let in water, the gaping hull cannot be saved; similarly, in an old man’s body, there is a certain limit up to which you can sustain and prop its weakness. But when it comes to resemble a decrepit building - when every joint begins to spread and while one is being repaired another falls apart - then it is time for a man to look about him and consider how he may get out (Ep. 30.2).

Perhaps the most famous suicide due to unbearable suffering was that of Atticus, Cicero’s dear friend and later a friend to Agrippa, who starved himself to death to escape the terrible pain of an abdominal cancer (Nepos, Atticus 21).

The fourth motive for suicide that was generally approved by the Romans was loyalty. The sources often attest to wives, soldiers, servants, and slaves committing suicide with their husbands or masters. Seneca’s wife Paulina insisted on dying with him, and according to Tacitus,

Seneca did not oppose her brave decision. Indeed, loving her wholeheartedly, he was reluctant to leave her behind to be persecuted. ‘Solace in life was what I commanded you,’ he said. ‘But you prefer death and glory. I will not grudge you your setting so fine an example. We can die with equal fortitude. But yours will be a nobler end’" (Ann. 15.63).

Another example is Sextia, the wife of Mamercus Scaurus, who, anticipating his impending condemnation for writing a tragedy critical of Tiberius, urged him to suicide and joined him in death. Tacitus approves, calling it an act worthy of the ancient house of the Amelii (Ann. 6.29). Suetonius and Tacitus record that several of Otho’s soldiers committed suicide before his funeral pyre (Suetonius, Otho 12; Tacitus, Histories 2.49). Similarly, Cassius’ lieutenant Titinius, upon hearing of Cassius’ suicide, slew himself (Plutarch, Life of Brutus 1213). Plutarch also relates that when Mark Antony asked his servant Eros to help him kill himself, Eros drew his sword and moved to slay Antony, but then suddenly turned the sword upon himself, his loyalty thus eliciting Antony’s admiration: "It is well done Eros. You show your master how to do what you had not the heart to do yourself" (Life of Antony 1147). Cleopatra’s two servants Charmion and Iras supposedly committed suicide with her as well (Plutarch, Antony 1151). The most famous suicide due to loyalty is of course Arria, whose husband Paetus was ordered to commit suicide by the emperor Claudius in 42 b.c. When Paetus was reluctant to fulfill the emperor’s command, Arria seized his dagger, stabbed herself in the breast, and handed it back to him, famously declaring, Paete, non dolet (Paetus, it does not hurt), words that Pliny deemed "immortal, almost divine" (Letters 3.16). Arria eventually became a cult figure of sorts (Noy 2).

We have seen that in general the Romans accepted four motives for suicide: saving face after a military defeat, avoiding the dishonor of execution, ending severe pain and suffering, and loyalty to a husband or master; obviously, suicides did occur for other reasons, but these were not generally celebrated or condoned. However, it was not only desirable to have a proper motive for suicide, but also to use the proper method. It is no coincidence that nearly all of the most celebrated suicides died by sword or dagger. This was the best way to kill oneself, the so-called "Roman death" of soldiers and generals, celebrated since the time of Lucretia. Next best was opening the veins. This was considered an easier way, generally employed by women and older men, but was not dishonorable. Very old men often died by self-starvation. Poison was generally frowned upon as unmanly, and was rarely used by public figures. The exception was Hemlock, used by men like Seneca who were attempting to emulate Socrates. Hanging was almost never used by the members of the elite, although when suicides among the lower classes are documented, hanging seems fairly common, as certain petty public servants were charged with cutting down the hanged. According to a passage in the Digest of Justinian, the wives of hanged men were forbidden to remarry for ten months (3.2.11.3). Drowning was rare as well. Cato’s ally Scipio threw himself into the sea upon his defeat by Caesar’s forces, but he had stabbed himself first (Appian, The Civil Wars 2.101). Ultimately, how one killed oneself was nearly as important as why one killed oneself; none of the suicides employing the frowned upon means of poison, hanging, or drowning were widely celebrated by the Romans.

The ideal Roman suicide had two other properties besides a proper motive and an acceptable method. First, the Romans felt that suicide should above all be a thoroughly rational act; only after a carefully consideration of the situation, based on the powers of reason and uninfluenced by emotions or passion, could a Roman decide whether or not to kill himself. Pliny writes of his friend Titus Aristo’s contemplation of suicide, "Many people have the impulse and urge to forestall death, but the ability to examine critically the arguments for dying, and to accept or reject the idea of living or not, is the mark of a truly great mind" (Letters 1.22). Similarly, he compliments his friend Corellius Rufus because "he was led to make his decision [to die] by the supremacy of reason" (Letters 1.12). When Cato’s friends tearfully beg him not to kill himself, he asks them "did I become deranged, and out of my senses, that thus no one tries to persuade me by reason?" (Plutarch, Cato the Younger 957). Likewise Seneca argues, "when reason advises us to make an end of it, the impulse is not to be adopted without reflection or at headlong speed. The brave and wise man should not beat a hasty retreat from life; he should make a becoming exit" (Ep. 24.24-5).

As Seneca’s point illustrates, because a Roman’s decision to die was a rational one, he was expected to be utterly calm and composed when committing suicide, rather than excited, upset, or overly hasty. Thus Tacitus credits Seneca with "philosophical imperturbability" at the moment of his suicide (Ann. 15.63), compliments Asiaticus, a falsely accused senator, because "he remained calm to the end" (Ann. 11.3), and praises Otho for settling his affairs calmly, "not like a man at the point of death" (Hist. 2.48). Nepos writes admiringly that on his deathbed Atticus’ "voice and expressions were so controlled that he seemed to be talking of going not from life to the hereafter but from one house to another" (Atticus 22). Similarly, Seneca compliments the composure of his friend Aufidius Bassus: "he contemplates his own end with the courage and countenance which you would regard as undue indifference in a man who so contemplated another’s" (Ep. 30.3).

Because of the rationality and deliberation with which Roman’s tried to approach their suicides, they often had time to carefully plan and orchestrate their deaths. The night before his suicide, Cato is said to have sat in bed, calmly read Plato’s Phaedo, and upon hearing the birds chirping in the morning, risen and turned his sword on himself (Seneca, Ep. 24.6; Plutarch, Cato the Younger 958). The night before Otho’s suicide, he calmly wrote two letters, one to his sister and one to his girlfriend, burned his papers to avoid incriminating any of his comrades to Vitellius, gave orders that the boats and wagons be made ready for the retreat of his army, and distributed his money he had with him among his men (Suetonius, Otho 10; Tacitus, Hist. 2.48). Tacitus records that before he killed himself Asiaticus exercised as was his daily routine, bathed and dined cheerfully, and inspected his own funeral pyre, ordering it moved so the flames would not damage the trees in his yard (Ann. 11.3). One of the most elaborately planned suicides was that of Petronius, as related by Tacitus, who privately severed his veins, then had them loosely bound up and went to talk with his friends, but not about serious topics, and had them recite not discourses on the immortality of the soul, but light lyrics and frivolous poems. As if it were any other day, he rewarded some of his slaves and beat others, and then appeared at dinner and dozed off - all this so that his suicide would appear to be a natural death. He also found time to compose an elaborate list of Nero’s sexual escapades, which he appended to his will as a final joke against the emperor (Ann. 16.19).

The second characteristic Romans generally expected of an ideal suicide was that it be a public event, committed in the presence of friends and family, and prefaced by a speech intended for public consumption, containing an explanation of motive, words of comfort, and advice for the future,. Atticus is a good example. Once he had decided to die, he summoned his son-in-law Agrippa, and his friends L. Cornelius Balbus and Sextus Peducaeus and gave the following speech:

You are all my witnesses that I have tried every means to preserve my health, and on that there can be no argument. I am satisfied that there is nothing more I can do for my illness, and so I have reached a decision. I want you to know that I do not mean to continue to feed my illness, for the food I eat merely prolongs my life, increases my pain without hope of cure. First of all I ask that you approve of my plan and then that you do not try to dissuade me" (Nepos, Atticus 21).

Cato, Brutus, and Otho also gave such speeches to their associates at the moment of their suicides (Seneca Ep. 24.7; Plutarch, Cato the Younger 958, Brutus 1218; Tacitus, Hist. 2.47-8; Suetonius, Otho 10). Seneca reports that even a lowly barbarian gladiator in the arena saw fit to give a short speech to the crowd before sinking his spear into his throat to escape his slavery (Ep. 70.26). It was Seneca himself who took this public aspect of Roman suicide to new heights, with a long, drawn out suicide that was nothing short of a dramatic production. The way Tacitus relates it (Ann. 15.62-4), upon receiving word that he was condemned to die, Seneca gave a speech to his friends "evidently intended for public hearing" thanking them for their friendship, consoling them, and attacking Nero. He then went to console his wife Paulina, but she insisted on attempting suicide with him. After he and Paulina opened their veins, Seneca summoned his secretaries and dictated a dissertation to be published after his death. Already well on his way to death from slitting his veins, Seneca now had his doctor give him hemlock, in an imitation of Socrates, although Tacitus reports that it had no additional effect. Finally, he had himself laced in a warm bath and proceeded to sprinkle some of the bloody water over his attendant slaves, declaring that this was a libation of Jupiter.

Interestingly, this Roman view of suicide as a rational act, calmly undertaken, carefully planned in advance, and intended for public consumption is almost entirely at odds with our modern conception of suicide. Whereas most modern societies tend to view nearly all suicides as irrational, hastily planned and executed in a fit of passion, and usually undertaken alone, this type of suicide was the sort most deplored by the Romans, the type of suicide they sought to avoid when choosing their own deaths. Thus Tacitus criticizes a man who leapt to his end from a building for his "sudden and undignified death" and reports that his mother was blamed and banished from Rome for ten years (Ann. 6.49). Hasty, messy, irrational suicides were never condoned by the Romans.

Ultimately the most celebrated Roman suicides possessed all of these elements, combining an acceptable motive with an honorable method and a rationally conceived, carefully planned, public death. The final ingredient was of a life people were willing to commemorate. Nero committed suicide for the right reasons, but had character flaws that prevented people’s desire to remember him (and didn’t do a very good job of killing himself anyway). Nero’s enemy Cerealis committed suicide as his duty demanded, but no one admired his suicide because he was hated for betraying a conspiracy to Caligula (Tacitus, Ann. 16.17). Conversely, an ideal suicide could immortalize a man who might have otherwise been undeserving. Otho did not succeed at very much in life, but in death he succeeded utterly, and was remembered for it. Even the great Cato, most deified of all the Roman suicides, was not remembered so much as the stern, unfriendly, and stubborn man he was in life, but as the courageous and heroic last defender of the Republic he became in death.

The Roman view of suicide is complex and hard to define easily. It is tempting to infer a kind of suicide "craze" or "epidemic" from the great number of suicides recorded in the sources, but caution is necessary. Suicide was clearly a popular theme in literature, but may have been less popular in real life. Unfortunately, the Romans did not keep statistics on such things. It is also important to remember that many voices are not represented in the sources, voices we only get a whisper of in Seneca’s gladiator and Pliny’s middle-class husband and wife. Generally the sources only discuss the lives of the elite of Roman society. However, what can be determined from the sources is that among Romans of the period of the Empire, an ideal of a model suicide had developed, embodied by Cato and his heirs, that was celebrated and widely imitated. Although suicide was not universally admired by all, when it conformed to certain motives, methods, and characteristics, it could bestow a measure of immortality. Even though many of the speeches and actions of the suicides were probably imagined or embellished, the ideal these stories represent was real, and had great influence on how the Romans chose to die.

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