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Literature Review 3 Roman Attitudes to Suicide from the 1 Century BC

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Literature Review 3 Roman Attitudes to Suicide from the 1 Century BC Literature Review 3 Roman Attitudes to Suicide from the 1st Century BC. To the 3rd 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 3rd 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. 235-237, 236-237. 2 Ibid., p. 235. 3 J. Douglas, The Social meaning of Suicide (Princeton, 1967), p. xiii. 1 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 1971. 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. 214-215, 217, 258. 5 Ibid., p. 330-332. 6 T. Hill, Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and Self in Roman Thought and Literature (London, 2004), pp. 5-7. 2 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 1982. 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. 51-54. 8 Hill, Ambitiosa Mors, p. 3. 9 J. Choron, Suicides: An Incisive Look at Self-Destruction (New York, 1972), p. 99. 10 Ibid., pp. 96-97. 3 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. 6. 13 Ibid., pp. 6-7. 14 G. Rosen, ‘History’ in S. Perlin (ed.) A Handbook for the Study of Suicide (London, 1975), pp. 3-29, pp. 5-8. 15 M. Billerback, ‘Le suicide dans la Rome Antique by Yolande Grisé’, Phoenix, 40(2) (1986), pp. 233-235, p. 234. 16 Hill, Ambitiosa Mors, p. 3. 4 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.
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