Why “alleged story”? You seem to be suggesting that the existence of the story is in doubt.
You’re right and I’m wrong - I’d remembered him speaking about choosing to die , but in the end he died naturally at home. Apologies for the error.
The death of Virgil’s Dido is fictional. According to Wiki, another account of her death is:
In either case, suicide due to a personal setback such as being jilted or losing in war or being disgraced doesn’t fit the OP. The OP says the individual commits suicide despite having “everything to live for.”
I would have thought not just dental pain, but any kind of severe chronic pain (e.g. back pain, arthritis, GI disorders), of which dental pain is a subset. Without surgery or drugs to address chronic pain, this must have been a major motive for suicide.
You have to realize that before the modern era there was a very different view of human nature. The idea of a subconscious arose only in the 19th century.
Prior to that, the accepted thought was that people were in conscious control of their actions. If you did something it was because you had thought it over and made the decision to do it. All human action was voluntary choice. This is such a fundamentally different way of seeing human nature, it’s hard for modern people to grasp.
The only exception to conscious control of your action was the common belief that outside entities (like demons or spirits) could enter a person’s body and take control. Belief in this phenomena arose from observation of people doing things they clearly would not consciously choose to do - so the idea was there must be some outside force controlling them.
The different view of suicide was one aspect of this different view of human nature. If you started from the premise that people were in conscious control of their actions, how could you explain somebody choosing to kill themselves? If you didn’t have the concept of irrational impulses in your world view, you had to invent apparently rational explanations for behavior.
Hemingway was losing his eyesight and had other physical problems, which were rapidly ending the rugged, outdoor life he always wanted. Plus, he had undergone electroshock therapy for depression.
Suicide ran in the family. Hemingway’s father, sister and brother also commmitted suicide. Of course, Margaux Hemingway died from an overdose of sleeping pills, although that was never officially ruled suicide.
Hunter Thompson also had been deprssed and written about his advancing age and health problems.
Having had several suicides in my immediate family / and I suffer from anxiety & depression, I “want” to follow this post.
Thanks (?)
We really have very little evidence about any specific individuals in the ancient world, except the rich, powerful, or famous ones. Even for many of them, it’s hard to separate out specific facts of their lives.
But the average Greek or Roman citizen (much less the poor or slaves) – hardly anything is known. We know overall statistical facts (how many there were, what crops they raised, what kinds of food they ate, etc.) – but details about specific ordinary people? Just not known, except for rare cases.
One of the first such records of individual people that I know of would be the “Great Survey” recorded in the Doomsday Book of England/Wales, ordered by William the Conqueror, so that he could know just what he had conquered. And that’s narly into the ‘modern’ era. Nobody kept such records on the ‘ordinary’ people back then – it just wasn’t that important.
So records on ‘ordinary’ suicides would be equally sparse.
Regardless of the veracity of the OP, I would suggest that History is mostly written about the heroes and anti-heroes. We know very little about day to day life of the ordinary man. There is no reason to report Joe Schmo committed suicide because no one cared. So it is very possible that the “everything to live for” suicides happened, but no one cared enough to report them.
Obviously, and no one in the ancient world would talk about “a long struggle with depression”. But the facts would speak for themselves.
Nm
But (as witnessed by the many celebrities who have taken their own life) high status individuals are just as likely to be victims of suicide (or at least not so much less likely, that it’s unheard of)
The kind of rich, aristocratic, white(*) male that the ancient chroniclers were obsessed with (and in that respect were not too different to a modern tabloids), would be just as likely to take their own life, despite having “everything to live for”, in 1BC as in 2016AD. But I don’t recall reading a single description of such a thing happening. I realize “being tricked by a god in human form” was probably a more likely explanation at the time than “lost a long struggle with depression”, but the fact would be reported.
(*- in the west at least)
Sorry, haven’t got one. If the cite was bad, oh well and my apologies.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, sort of. What was known as melancholia was recognized as… well, a thing. It was connected to the concept of four temperaments, which in turn was thought to have to do with four bodily fluids. So, yes, it was known that people could become what we would call depressed, sometimes for no obvious reason, and this was discussed by physicians like Hippocrates and Galen. It’s not really the same as a modern concept of clinical depression, though.
Empedocles jumped into a volcano. It may not have been suicide, he may have been an idiot.
Isocrates–starved himself to death
Lucretius–killed himself
Seneca was a forced suicide by Nero–so probably doesn’t count
Uriel de Costa – Shot himself (but this is late 1600’s so may not count as ‘ancient’)
And please don’t say ‘unproven’, you want ancients you have to have make allowances for the fog of the passage of time. Also, poisons were well known in ancient Rome, many suicides (particularly women ) may have been unrecognized. Until the 20th century, people just…died. Many of those could have been suicides.
You’ll note that these listed are all men. The lives of roman women are mostly unreported. I can’t think of a woman of note who committed suicide (other than the widely mentioned Dido) except if it was a forced suicide.
One of the most famous was Porcia Catonis, the wife of Brutus, who supposedly committed suicide by swallowing hot coals when she heard of her husband’s death (or maybe defeat). This is mentioned by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar.
Well, he was apparently all bummed out by the outcome of the Battle of Chaeronea.
Oh, this is possibly a very good one (at the risk of sounding morbid). Thanks! The sources seem to be a bit short on details, though. But yeah, it appears that he might have gone bonkers, and then offed himself. This could be the closest yet to what the OP is after.
I would think that there are a few, starting with Lucretia. I mentioned Antonia Minor upthread. (Also, Porcia Catonis, as **Colibri **said.)
Indeed. Even with the rich and powerful, you do get a fair amount of sudden death with no reported cause. Of course, disease is always a probable scenario in the ancient world, and there are lots of things that you can drop dead from that the ancients would have had no way to diagnose. Even so, though, there are cases that make you wonder a bit.
For starters, I’m wondering a bit about the mental state of Scipio Aemilianus. This Scipio was the Roman commander in charge at the destruction of Carthage (not to be confused with other Scipios). At one point during that whole nasty business, with Carthage going up in flames, he was seen crying (according to Polybius, who was there). When asked why, Scipio reportedly recited a passage from the Iliad about the destruction of Troy, and then said the he could foresee the same thing one day happening to Rome.
Well, sure, Scipio. Or maybe it’s just that you’ve just spent quite a bit of time recently in charge of ordering atrocities, and you’ve witnessed any number of horrible things. I think you’re allowed a little bit of a breakdown at this point. It’s understandable.
Then, later, he was also the commander in charge at the Siege of Numantia, in Spain. More nasty business.
Scipio died suddenly, under mysterious circumstances, in 129 BC. Suicide (possibly by poison) was apparently suspected even at the time, as one possible scenario (although disease or murder are other possibilities). Of course, it’s just speculation, and somewhat off the wall at that, but I do wonder: You have to think that there were things that he had seen and done that might have come back to haunt him, in his nightmares or otherwise.
Although, I guess that suicide as a result of PTSD (and, again, it’s just speculation) isn’t exactly the same as the “for no good reason” type scenario that the OP is getting at.
That’s a pretty hardcore way to die. What’s wrong with shoving a sword straight into one’s heart the proper Roman way, anyhow ?
I don’t consider having a best selling album “mythical”. And maybe she just realized she’d never figure out why her tea was consistently stone cold and decided to just give up and end it all.
Or Caligula poisoned her. Considering his history with bumping people off, let’s cal it 50/50 suicide/assassination