Literature Review 3 Roman Attitudes to Suicide from the 1 st Century BC. To the 3 rd Century AD.

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1 Literature Review 3 Roman Attitudes to Suicide from the 1 st Century BC. To the 3 rd Century AD. In a review he wrote in 1990, Michael MacDonald observed that for most of the twentieth century historians had treated the study of suicide with indifference and that it had fallen to sociologists to argue that the study of suicide can be key to understanding the culture and social dynamics of whole societies. 1 As a result much of the early historical research into Roman attitudes to suicide from the first century BC. to the 3 rd century AD. was undertaken by sociologists seeking to put their work in historical context or to utilise historical case studies. By 1990, however, suicide had become a hot topic amongst historians and new studies continue to be published. 2 Several philosophers and a psychiatrist have also undertaken works important to the study of suicide in this period. This essay will review the historiography of Roman attitudes to suicide by looking at a range of works from the fields of History, Sociology, Psychiatry, and Philosophy, to put my future work in a wider scholarly context. This will involve examining a list of key works on the topic in the order they were published, examining their argumentation and relevant conclusions to track the developments in scholarship on this topic. From case studies used to develop theories around modern suicide and shallow stereotypes through philosophical, moral analysis to the emergence of political analysis and syntheses of these latter two approaches in the most recent scholarship. Emile Durkheim published his vastly influential work Suicide: A Study in Sociology in 1897 revolutionising the field of sociology with Durkheim developing much of the theory and methodology that would be used by sociologists into the 1960 s. 3 His work utilised ancient Rome as an occasional case study in his efforts to demonstrate that all suicides can be broken down into three types, with corresponding social causes: egoistic suicide, resulting from an individual s lack of 1 M. MacDonald, Reviews: Anton J. L. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity, History of Psychiatry, 6(2) (1990), pp , Ibid., p J. Douglas, The Social meaning of Suicide (Princeton, 1967), p. xiii. 1

2 integration into society; altruistic suicide, resulting from the overbearing presence of society in an individual s life; and anomic suicide, which results when an individual is sufficiently integrated into their society but that society does not provide the necessary regulation of behaviour. 4 He uses Rome amongst his examples of egoistic suicides turned to altruistic suicides as the Republic declines but does not investigate in any depth beyond arguing for the strength of laws discouraging suicide in the early Republican period, positing that late Etruscan laws are likely to have been similar to the Greek law codes for which we have more information. 5 This analysis of Roman suicide has been criticised by more recent scholarship, particularly Timothy Hill, who responds by trying to compare the suicide of Cato, the defining suicide of the late Republican era, with the supposedly anomic suicide which Durkheim implies was prevalent at the end of this period and concludes that they do not match. Hill concludes that although Classical Scholars have tended to take Durkheim as their starting point for inquiries into [Roman suicide] they have invariably run into difficulties in applying Durkheimian concepts to the ancient evidence. 6 On reflection Durkheim s method of analysis of suicide is not appropriate to Roman society, by focusing on an individual s level of integration with society and the level of regulation within that society to search for a cause, he ignores the often political or philosophical motives behind Roman suicides which are so important for understanding them and the attitudes of Roman society regarding them. Another early look at Roman suicide is presented in Al Alvarez s influential work The Savage God published in The Savage God: A Study of Suicide intended to map the changing attitudes towards suicide by societies in the West and describes ancient societies as generally more tolerant of suicide, this attitude being epitomised by the Romans who turned suicide into high fashion, 4 E. Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (London, 1952), pp , 217, Ibid., p T. Hill, Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and Self in Roman Thought and Literature (London, 2004), pp

3 refilling it with emotion after it had been rationalised by the Greeks. 7 The breadth of the study necessarily reduces Roman suicide to a single dramatic aspect so as to fit in as part of a narrative of transformation of Western attitudes. 8 The Savage God simplifies the diverse range of Roman attitudes towards suicide and creates a popular stereotype which is not directly challenged by historians until the publication of Le Suicide dans la Rome Antique by Yolande Grisé in Between the publication of The Savage God and Le Suicide dans la Rome Antique, however, several contributions to the study of Roman suicide were made by scholars outside of the field of history. Jaques Choron published his work, Suicide: An Incisive Look at Self-Destruction in 1972 which uses Roman society, and the rational suicides he attempts to identify, as a case study to help answer a question related to suicide prevention, when, if ever, is the clinician willing to say: Yes, I agree; it is the best thing for you to do. 9 In attempting to answer this question Choron stresses how difficult the identification of rational suicide is, defining it as a case of suicide where the individual s reasoning was not impaired and that his motives would seem justifiable, or at least, understandable, by the majority of his contemporaries in the same culture or social group. 10 This definition, stressing the importance of contemporary opinion rather than modern perceptions of what is rational, highlights the importance for studies of Roman suicide to show a thorough understanding of the prevailing philosophical opinions from the time. Similar cautionary warnings were given to those studying suicide by the psychiatrist Norman Farberow in the 1975 study, Suicide in Different Cultures which he edited and contributed to. In his introduction he notes that suicide has been particularly troublesome because it is the only mode of death that depends specifically on a psychological motivation; that is, the death results from a conscious initiation of activities by the 7 A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London, 1971), pp Hill, Ambitiosa Mors, p J. Choron, Suicides: An Incisive Look at Self-Destruction (New York, 1972), p Ibid., pp

4 decedent that were intended to bring about his own demise. 11 Farberow s principle historical argument proposes that suicide developed into a social crime as the influence and prosperity of Rome declined in the third century AD and its intellectual traditions began to dissipate. 12 Although he discusses the simultaneous growth of Christianity and St. Augustine s arguments against suicide he does not make reference to Plato s influence on this argument or combine the decline of Roman values and the rise of Christian values, the two are treated at the same time but separately. 13 George Rosen writing in the 1975 volume A Handbook for the Study of Suicide advances a related line of argument. However rather than using philosophical sources Rosen relies more heavily on histories to give a very brief overview of Roman attitudes to suicide, stressing that although they varied throughout time his examples suggest that there was a trend towards the negative throughout my period of study. 14 The argument is weakened by its brevity and simultaneous treatment of the Greeks with little conscious effort made to differentiate between them. Le Suicide dans la Rome antique by Yolande Grisé was published in French in 1982 arguing that suicide was not a fashion in ancient Rome but a practical solution to a range of problems in life [such] as illness, grief, debts, prosecution or impending execution. 15 This challenged the stereotype previously presented by Alvarez and would be a theme picked up by later scholars in the English language. 16 Miriam Griffin s two part article from 1986 Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide builds on the work done by Grisé noting theatricality in several examples of Roman suicide stating that the differences between these suicides and our modern perceptions of suicide are the philosophical 11 N. Farberow, Introduction in N. Farberow (ed.) Suicide in Different Cultures (London, 1975), pp. xi-xviii, p. xi. 12 N. Farberow, Cultural History of Suicide in N. Farberow (ed.) Suicide in Different Cultures (London, 1975), pp. 1-15, p Ibid., pp G. Rosen, History in S. Perlin (ed.) A Handbook for the Study of Suicide (London, 1975), pp. 3-29, pp M. Billerback, Le suicide dans la Rome Antique by Yolande Grisé, Phoenix, 40(2) (1986), pp , p Hill, Ambitiosa Mors, p. 3. 4

5 overtones of Roman suicide. 17 Although Griffin discusses the various schools of philosophical thought in demonstrating these overtones, she challenges the idea that the philosophical schools of late Republican and early Imperial Rome were the principle cause of the generally positive attitudes towards many suicides. 18 Instead she suggests that it was the giving of reasons and the demonstration of fearlessness in the face of death that made Cato s suicide so admirable. 19 Anton van Hooff is another scholar who built upon the work of Grisé. Van Hooff argues that Roman attitudes towards suicide were ambiguous, citing the example of Martial who both praises and derides suicide throughout his work. 20 Van Hooff does this by making use of the nearly complete chronological list of suicides Grisé compiled and breaking them down to examine the demographics of Roman suicide, including gender and method and examining the various attitudes towards each presented in sources. 21 Van Hooffs conclusions disagree with Grisé on the demographics of Roman suicide. The study shows that starvation was not as widespread a method of suicide as was previously believed and that contrary to Grisé s argument, that the methods of suicide have remained broadly similar, that women disproportionately chose to hang themselves in ancient Rome whereas the opposite is true today. 22 MacDonald criticises From Autothanasia to Suicide however, pointing out that van Hooff rarely attempts to analyse the large amount of information compiled for any trends in attitudes beyond the raw numbers of his charts and that the books backwards structure, a discussion of legal and intellectual context occurs after the individual cases have been described, leaves the attitudes of antique culture to suicide confused rather than clarified M. Griffin, Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: I, Greece and Roman, Second Series 33 (1986), pp , pp Ibid., P M. Griffin, Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: II, Greece and Roman, Second Series 33(2) (1986), pp , p A. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity (London, 1990), pp. xiii-xiv. 21 Ibid., pp. 21, 29, 35, 42, Ibid. pp. 41, MacDonald, Reviews: Anton J. L. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide, p

6 The Game of Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide by Paul Plass examines Roman attitudes towards suicide from a political perspective, moral attitudes are considered but are used to better analyse how a particular suicide might have been seen by contemporaries at the time. Plass begins his discussion of political suicide by presenting two basic points on which he builds his main discussion. That Rome s civil wars normalised suicide so that it became a valuable last resort during the politics of peacetime and second, that suicide is presented in the sources as an ad hoc institution that, while unofficial, came to enjoy some legal recognition. 24 Having substantiated these two claims Plass goes on to discuss the possible motives for political suicide by analysing a variety of situations that might lead to suicide and trying to link them to the ways these suicides might be interpreted by society and creating two matrices to summarise the results of this discussion and enable more effective future analysis. 25 The results show that the option of suicide was an important one in the politics of imperial Rome which could be used to the benefit of the reigning emperor or other political players dependant on the precise series of moves made before the suicide. 26 That different suicides could be seen in such a variety of different ways dependant on the precise context is an important observation for the study of Roman attitudes towards suicide and the value of The Game of Death in Ancient Rome is that it manages to demonstrate this whilst also offering an effective means of analysing individual cases of suicide for future studies. However, Timothy Hill in his 2004 work entitled Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and Self in Roman Thought and Literature appears to reject this political analysis and instead takes an in depth look at several key literary sources from the late Republic to the reign of Nero to come to two main conclusions. Following on from Griffin, Hill argues that the moral virtues being displayed in the act played the dominant role in inspiring suicide amongst the elite during this period. Hill also concludes that such 24 P. Plass, The Game of the Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide (London, 1995), pp Ibid., pp Ibid., p

7 suicides begin to disappear from the historical record, not because they no longer occur, but because they no longer require literary immortalising to be such a profoundly moral act. 27 Hill s arguments are successful in re-establishing a role for moral virtue, alongside the political value demonstrated by Plass, in the interpretation of attitudes to suicide. Catherine Edwards also explored the idea the suicide as a performance in her 2005 article Modelling Roman Suicide? The Afterlife of Cato. 28 Edwards centralises the importance of the suicide as a moral exemplar using the example of Cato, arguing that he could have been portrayed as a hero whilst ignoring the manner of his death, but instead his death was considered to be incredibly significant and admirable. That, in choosing to die, Cato bore witness to the true value of those liberties which would disappear under autocracy. 29 Edward s discussion of Cato s death and the tradition it built up in Roman society does not break much new ground but the concept of a moral exemplar is one that is used by her to greater effect in Death in Ancient Rome, published in Edwards seeks to investigate the degree to which Roman death discourse was rooted in other aspects of Roman culture, anxieties about gender difference, social differentiation, personal identity, national identity, political change. 30 Her discussion of political suicide builds on the work of Plass, noting in particular that for the Romans the distinction between voluntary death, ordered suicide, and execution was an important one. 31 She also shows an awareness of Durkheim, stating that the categories he develops cannot be applied in understanding Roman suicide but that other models can offer suggestive ways into understanding. 32 The books scope, a broader look at Roman attitudes to death, means that the examples of suicide found in the work and Edwards analysis of them are well contextualised but their separation in being matched to the aspects of Roman culture she wishes to root them in makes 27 Hill, Ambitiosa Mors, p C. Edwards, Modelling Roman Suicide? The Afterlife of Cato, Economy and Society, 34(2) (2005), pp , p Ibid., p C. Edwards, Death in Ancient Rome (London, 2007), p Ibid., pp Ibid., p

8 it more difficult to discover trends in the attitudes expressed by the sources. However, one key trend Edwards does expound upon is a change in Roman attitudes to military suicide. Edwards argues that military suicides such as Cato s became so valued because by killing themselves, rather than their fellow Romans, they displayed more virtue than they might have done by winning in battle, as was previously expected of good Romans. The most recent study of Roman attitudes to suicide is Roman Death by Valerie Hope. Very similar in scope to Edwards work, Hope differentiates her treatment of suicide in Roman Death by focusing on the uses of literary depictions. Through a similar thematic approach to Edwards, Hope demonstrates that death scenes in Roman literature, including suicides, were often constructed to suit the needs of the author, the political climate, or both. 33 Not only were suicides politically useful to the victim, in sending an impressive message, and the emperor at the time as Plass argued, but also to those who wrote about them and this is something that future studies will have to pay particularly close attention to. Durkheim s initial use of ancient Roman society s attitudes towards suicide may have drawn false conclusions, a mistranslation to fit his thesis, and that his categories of suicide do not accommodate nicely for the types of suicide we find in ancient Rome but it did lead the way for historical studies. Amongst the earliest of these, The Savage God by Alvarez created an enduring stereotype for Roman attitudes that continues to influence thinking today but since then more recent scholarship has refined these initial ideas. Moral interpretations influenced by the studies of philosophers into the philosophical schools dominant in ancient Rome have become commonplace in attempts to understand the attitudes of Roman society, and huge quantities of data has been gathered leading to demographic studies on the topic which have increased our knowledge of the diverse range 33 V. Hope, Roman Death (London, 2009), p

9 attitudes. The most recent studies have tended to use both political and moral analysis of suicides to discover the attitudes of Romans, although these studies have also primarily focused on the early Imperial period, their shorter time frame, broader focus on death, and thematic rather than chronological structures have the necessary consequences of making trends in developing attitudes harder to spot and analysis of these developments more limited. Because of the early Imperial focus of the majority of studies the gap left by Farberow, the changing attitudes of pagan Romans towards suicide in the late second and third centuries AD., remains to be thoroughly examined and warrants further study. 9

10 Bibliography Alvarez, A., The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (London, 1971). Billerback, M., Le suicide dans la Rome Antique by Yolande Grisé, Phoenix, 40(2) (1986), pp Choron, J., Suicides: An Incisive Look at Self-Destruction (New York, 1972). Durkheim, E., Suicide: A Study in Sociology (London, 1952). Edwards, C., Modelling Roman Suicide? The Afterlife of Cato, Economy and Society, 34(2) (2005), pp Edwards, C., Death in Ancient Rome (London, 2007). Farberow, N., Cultural History of Suicide in N. Farberow (ed.) Suicide in Different Cultures (London, 1975), pp Farberow, N., Introduction in N. Farberow (ed.) Suicide in Different Cultures (London, 1975), pp. xixviii. Griffin, M., Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: I, Greece and Roman, Second Series 33 (1986), pp Griffin, M., Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: II, Greece and Roman, Second Series 33(2) (1986), pp Hill, T., Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and Self in Roman Thought and Literature (London, 2004). Hope, V., Roman Death (London, 2009). MacDonald, M., Reviews: Anton J. L. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity, History of Psychiatry, 6(2) (1990), pp Plass, P., The Game of the Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide (London, 1995). Rosen, G., History in S. Perlin (ed.) A Handbook for the Study of Suicide (London, 1975), pp Van Hooff, A., From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity (London, 1990). 10