Suicide: Its History, Literature, Jurisprudence, Causation, and Prevention — John Shaqi
Suicide: Its History, Literature, Jurisprudence, Causation, and PreventionWestcott, W. Wynn (William Wynn)
Philosophy
Suicide: Its History, Literature, Jurisprudence, Causation, and Prevention
Westcott, W. Wynn (William Wynn)
Suicide
NICOCLES, 310 B.C., King of Paphos, in Cyprus, intrigued against
Ptolemy, and destroyed himself, and his whole family did the same, to
avoid being disgraced.
BRENNUS, 278 B.C., a Gallic general, invaded Greece, but his army being
defeated, he killed himself in a fit of intoxication.
ZENO, 264 B.C., founder of the Stoic sect of philosophers, in walking
in his school one day, he fell and broke a finger; this so disgusted
him with life in this world, that he went straight home and strangled
himself.
REGULUS, 251 B.C., a Roman consul during the First Punic War,
was defeated and taken prisoner to Carthage. Some years after he
was allowed to go to Rome to negotiate an exchange of prisoners,
having first been compelled to bind himself by an oath to return if
unsuccessful. On arriving in Rome he dissuaded his countrymen from the
proposed terms and then promptly returned to certain death at Carthage.
THEOXENA AND HER HUSBAND threw themselves into the sea to escape
capture by the soldiers of Philip of Macedon.
CLEANTHES, 240 B.C., a Stoic philosopher, starved himself because he
was seized with an illness, preferring death to lingering disease.
HASDRUBAL, THE WIFE OF, 216 B.C., set fire to a temple and threw
herself and her two children into the flames rather than fall into
the hands of Scipio the Roman general. Her husband was a Carthaginian
general who fought in the Second Punic war.
SOPHONISBA, 203 B.C., was the daughter of Hasdrubal the Carthaginian
general, married to Syphax, Prince of Numidia; but she fell a captive
into the hands of Masinissa, who then took her to wife, but Scipio the
Roman general having seen her, also fancied her as a wife, so she drank
poison to avoid this second change.
ERATOSTHENES, 194 B.C., mathematician, starved himself to death because
he found his sight failing him.
HANNIBAL, 183 B.C., a celebrated Carthaginian general, being defeated
by Scipio at Zama, fled to Bithynia, but being pursued even there,
killed himself by means of poison, which he always carried about him
concealed in rings.
CLEOMBROTUS, a young Greek philosopher, who after reading the Phædon of
Plato, threw himself off a wall into the sea. (Ovid.)
ARISTARCHUS, 157 B.C., grammarian and critic, starved himself to death,
at Cyprus, after being banished from Alexandria.
CAIUS GRACCHUS, 121 B.C., Tribune of Rome, was killed by a slave at his
own request, after defeat by the consul Opimius.
ANTIOCHUS OF CYZICUS, 95 B.C., King of Syria, killed himself when
dethroned by Seleucus.
MITHRIDATES, KING OF PONTUS, 63 B.C., killed himself to avoid falling
into the hands of the Romans, after being defeated by Pompey.
LUCRETIUS, 54 B.C., Roman poet and philosopher, destroyed himself in
his forty-fourth year.
PTOLEMY, 50 B.C., King of Cyprus, killed himself by poison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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