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Often appears with: the passions and the emotions · the fear of death · mourning and grief · crime and punishment · fate, destiny, and necessity · plague, famine, and mass death · honor, shame, and reputation · funeral rites and burial · equity, mercy, and pardon · corellius rufus · suicide threat · marriage and betrothal
Usually: confronting death (32) · lament (24) · narrative (23) · indignation (10) · detachment (6) · letter or document (4) · argument (3) · betrayal (3) · crisis of belief (3) · grief and loss (3)
“My fatal course is finish’d; and I go, A glorious name, among the ghosts below.” Virgil, The Aeneid · observation
“For this, this only favour let me sue, If pity can to conquer’d foes be due: Refuse it not; but let my body have The last retreat of humankind, a grave.” Virgil, The Aeneid · precept
“If a bull could speak, he might as well exclaim,--Here am I with this cow and this grass; what being can enjoy greater felicity?” James Boswell, Boswell's Life of Johnson · wit
“He assured me, that one sin unatoned for was as sufficient to damn a soul as one leak was to sink a ship.” Olaudah Equiano (also known as Gustavus Vassa), The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equ · observation
“About three o'clock in the night he did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction, and deprived his country of one of her most valued citizens, whose valour and intelligence would have been now employed in avenging the wrongs of his country” Meriwether Lewis, History of the Expedition under the Command of Capta · observation
“Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a more terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window; but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear women and children run screaming about the rooms like distracted.” Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year · vivid
“It is well done, Eros,” said Antony; “you show your master how to do what you had not the heart to do yourself;” and so he ran himself into the belly, and laid himself upon the couch.” Plutarch, Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans · vivid
“Never may the dawn appear again to my eyes, never mayst thou see me living any longer, if I should take thought for anything before thy life or thy sons’ lives, for they are my brothers, my dear kinsmen and youthful companions.” Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica · precept
“What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death?” Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufe · vivid
“I will meet it and defy it!” And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever.” Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufe · insight
“Then Psyches fell flat on the ground, and as long as she could see her husband she cast her eyes after him into the aire, weeping and lamenting pitteously: but when hee was gone out of her sight shee threw her selfe into the next running river” Apuleius, The Golden Asse · vivid
“Corellius Rufus is dead; and dead, too, by his own act!” Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus), Letters of Pliny · observation
After Capua’s surrender, Fulvius Flaccus and Appius Claudius disagree over punishing Capuan senators; Fulvius sentences many immediately, receives a later Roman decree too late, and a Campanian kills himself rather than die dishonor.
is the only free and honourable way to death. Our very enemies will admire our courage, and Hannibal will learn that those whom he deserted and betrayed were brave allies." 14. More of those who heard this speech of Virrius approved of the proposal contained in it, than had strength of mind to execute what they approved. The greater part of the senate being not without hopes that the Romans, whose clemency they had …
Masinissa weeps and retires; he orders a servant to give Sophonisba poison to prevent her delivery alive to Romans, and Sophonisba drinks it calmly, after which Scipio soothes him with honors and titles to maintain stability.
deform many good qualities by one vice, and mar the credit of so many meritorious deeds by a degree of guilt more than proportioned to the value of its object." 15. While Masinissa heard these observations, he not only became suffused with blushes, but burst into tears; and after declaring that he would submit to the discretion of the general, and imploring him that, as far as circumstances would permit, he would co…
Dido’s nurse ushers her toward the funeral pyre, but Dido—stricken and furious—burns herself with Aeneas’s sword and last boasts that her city and vengeance justify her death.
pay my vows to Stygian Jove, And end the cares of my disastrous love; Then cast the Trojan image on the fire, And, as that burns, my passions shall expire.” The nurse moves onward, with officious care, And all the speed her aged limbs can bear. But furious Dido, with dark thoughts involv’d, Shook at the mighty mischief she resolv’d. With livid spots distinguish’d was her face; Red were …
Turnus, a Rutulian leader, realizes a guileful phantom has tricked him and, fearing shame and death, asks for shipwreck or drowning rather than returning dishonored.
wind in poop, the vessel plows the sea, And measures back with speed her former way. Meantime Aeneas seeks his absent foe, And sends his slaughter’d troops to shades below. The guileful phantom now forsook the shroud, And flew sublime, and vanish’d in a cloud. Too late young Turnus the delusion found, Far on the sea, still making from the ground. Then, thankless for a life redeem’d by shame, …
Mezentius offers a final request for his own burial and death-as-grave, refusing to frame his death as dishonorable, while applying his throat to the sword.
Aeneas, hast’ning, wav’d his fatal sword High o’er his head, with this reproachful word: “Now; where are now thy vaunts, the fierce disdain Of proud Mezentius, and the lofty strain?” Struggling, and wildly staring on the skies, With scarce recover’d sight he thus replies: “Why these insulting words, this waste of breath, To souls undaunted, and secure of death? ’Tis no dishonour for the brave…
At Westminster chapel Equiano is examined for communion and told that one unatoned sin condemns; he is refused, later returns to sea on a ship bound for Cadiz, and wrestles with fear of hell and thoughts of suicide.
Now I thought much of my good works, and at the same time was doubtful of my being a proper object to receive the sacrament; I was full of meditation till the day of examining. However, I went to the chapel, and, though much distressed, I addressed the reverend gentleman, thinking, if I was not right, he would endeavour to convince me of it. When I conversed with him, the first thing he asked me was, what I knew of C…
Despite locking himself and his family up, the narrator must occasionally visit his brother in Coleman Street, where he witnesses despair, suicides, and family breakdown, including a deputy alderman hanging himself.
locked myself up, and my family, and resolved to suffer the hardship of living a few months without flesh-meat, rather than to purchase it at the hazard of our lives. But though I confined my family, I could not prevail upon my unsatisfied curiosity to stay within entirely myself; and though I generally came frighted and terrified home, yet I could not restrain; only that indeed I did not do it so …
Lucullus’ conquests release captives and spare royal women, while several wives and sisters commit suicide under threat of death; among them Berenice of Chios, Statira, and Roxana are described in detail.
of gold in his girdle; whereas Lucullus had specially ordered that he should be conveyed safe into the camp. Notwithstanding all which, he gave them leave to plunder the camp. After this, in Cabira, and other strong-holds which he took, he found great treasures, and private prisons, in which many Greeks and many of the king's relations had been confined, who, having long since counted themselves no other than dead m…
Mistaking Cleopatra’s messengers as truth, Antony takes his own life using Eros as his intended executioner; he is still alive when brought to Cleopatra in her monument.
suddenly passed out. People who reflected considered this to signify that Bacchus, the god whom Antony had always made it his study to copy and imitate, had now forsaken him. As soon as it was light, he marched his infantry out of the city, and posted them upon a rising ground, from whence he saw his fleet make up to the enemy. There he stood in expectation of the event; but, as soon as the fleets came near to one …
Cleopatra, permitted to bury Antony, refuses food under grief, is threatened by Caesar into eating, and later receives a private warning about being transported; she arranges her own death with a hidden asp narrative.
So, afterwards, when Cleopatra was dead, he was killed. Many kings and great commanders made petition to Caesar for the body of Antony, to give him his funeral rites; but he would not take away his corpse from Cleopatra, by whose hands he was buried with royal splendor and magnificence, it being granted to her to employ what she pleased on his funeral. In this extremity of grief and sorrow, and having inflamed and …
Thomas Jefferson recounts Governor Lewis’s hypochondriac afflictions, his travel to Washington in 1809, and Lewis’s temporary relief followed by a mental paroxysm leading to his suicide near the Chickasaw Bluffs.
even-handed justice he administered to all soon established a respect for his person and authority; and perseverance and time wore down animosities, and reunited the citizens again into one family. Governor Lewis had, from early life, been subject to hypochondriac affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited by him from his f…
At Thrale’s, Boswell depicts Johnson’s witty remarks on Garrick’s vanity, a savage-life argument dismissed as brutish, suicide analyzed psychologically, and Johnson’s conversation about humor, lottery-like joking, and witty contests.
you not read it through?' Johnson, offended at being thus pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of reading, answered tartly, 'No, Sir, do YOU read books THROUGH?' On Wednesday, April 21, I dined with him at Mr. Thrale's. A gentleman attacked Garrick for being vain. JOHNSON. 'No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown t…
Adam argues that Eve’s wish for suicide shows anguish, not virtue, and that God’s punishment is not easily evaded; he urges a better alternative and recalls that he has something in mind.
Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent, than what thy mind contemns; But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes That excellence thought in thee; and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overloved. Or if thou covet death, as utmost end Of misery, so thinking to evade The penalty pronounced; doubt not but God Hath…
He keeps reading the Bible in darkness and tries to rig a wooden pole to kill himself, but something throws him away; later priests announce he was found dead and he survives.
of Giovanni Villani. [1] When I asked for certain other of my books, I was told that I could have no more, and that I had got too many already. Thus, then, I continued to exist in misery upon that rotten mattress, which in three days soaked up water like a sponge. I could hardly stir because of my broken leg; and when I had to get out of bed to obey a call of nature, I crawled on all fours with extreme distress, in …
After Plancina gains secret pardon, Piso writes to his freedman, prepares himself, and is found at dawn having cut his own throat; Tacitus relays rumours that he was killed by an agent.
put into a litter and carried back by a tribune of a Praetorian cohort; an attendance variously understood, whether as a guard for his safety, or a minister of death. Plancina was under equal public hatred, but had more secret favour: hence it was doubted how far Tiberius durst proceed against her. For herself; while her husband's hopes were yet plausible, she professed "she would accompany his fortune, whatever it …
Gretel notes a new mourning schoolfellow from Hamburg whose father shot himself, then follows Hella and Anneliese von Zerkwitz home, explaining Anneliese’s father’s death and her move to Vienna.
do wish I were 14, I simply can’t wait. Hella’s mother said to Hella, You are not a child any longer, but a grown-up; I do wish I were too!!! February 16th. We have a new schoolfellow. All the girls and all the staff are delighted with her. She is so small she might be only 10, but awfully pretty. She has brown curls (Hella says foxy red, but I don’t agree) hanging down to her shoulders, large brown eyes, a lovely m…
Sextus returns secretly to Collatia alone, threatens Lucretia with a drawn sword and dishonor, persuades her briefly into silence, and then Lucretia summons father and husband, declares the assault, and kills herself.
violating Lucretia by force seized Sextus Tarquinius; both her beauty, and her proved chastity urged him on. Then, after this youthful frolic of the night, they returned to the camp. After an interval of a few days, Sextus Tarquinius, without the knowledge of Collatinus, came to Collatia with one attendant only: there he was made welcome by them, as they had no suspicion of his design, and, having been conducted aft…
After Joseph’s death, Selucus Soter rules; Onias’s line continues through Simeon and then Onias, Areus of Sparta sends an embassy claiming shared descent from Abraham, and Hyrcanus later kills himself under Antiochus Epiphanes’s threat.
to the city, where nobody would receive him, he was afraid for himself, and retired beyond the river Jordan, and there abode, but obliging the barbarians to pay their taxes. 10. At this time Seleucus, who was called Soter, reigned over Asia, being the son of Antiochus the Great. And [now] Hyrcanus's father, Joseph, died. He was a good man, and of great magnanimity; and brought the Jews out of a state of poverty and …
Chalciope returns to inform her sons, while Medea struggles with shame and hesitation, considers suicide by drug, then chooses to proceed at dawn to Hecate’s temple with magic to spell the bulls.
the sake of my sons? And from him has come Argus urging me to try to win thy help; I left him in the palace meantime while I came hither.” Thus she spake, and Medea’s heart bounded with joy within her, and at once her fair cheeks flushed, and a mist swam before her melting eyes, and she spake as follows: “Chalciope, as is dear and delightful to thee and thy sons, even so will I do. Never may the dawn appear again to…
Ghismonda drinks the water mixed with poison into the cup containing Guiscardo’s heart, dies in her room, and Tancred and the people of Salerno mourn and bury them together.
yet here within, I doubt not, contemplating the abodes of her and my delights, and--for sure I am that she loves me--awaiting my soul that loves her before all else." Having thus spoken, she bowed herself low over the cup; and, while no womanish cry escaped her, 'twas as if a fountain of water were unloosed within her head, so wondrous a flood of tears gushed from her eyes, while times without number she kissed the …
In desperate widowhood Moll lives for two years without help, sells goods, then turns to prayer and suicidal desperation, stealing a bundle from an apothecary in Leadenhall Street and later tormenting herself with fear and guilt.
sixpence that I paid for a loaf of bread was the last that I had in the world, and that to-morrow I was to fast, and be starved to death. In this distress I had no assistant, no friend to comfort or advise me; I sat and cried and tormented myself night and day, wringing my hands, and sometimes raving like a distracted woman; and indeed I have often wondered it had not affected my reason, for I had the vapours to suc…
After describing despair, Teufelsdröckh says Christianity’s “after-shine” kept him from suicide, but he lived in pining fear until a single thought turns it into indignation and defiant spiritual resolve.
your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drug-shop in your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust!" Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our Professor's still vein, significance enough? "From Suicide a certain after-shine (*Nachschein*) of Christianity withheld…
The passage claims suffering is compensated by constant advantages, argues against suicide as a response to natural evil, and states that evils arise accidentally from good causes in a world with necessary limitations.
to make natural evils a pretext for taking one's own life, since one finds that those who have done so have generally been prompted to such action by voluntary evils. 11. After all, one finds that all these evils of which we have spoken come accidentally from good causes; and there is reason to infer concerning all we do not know, from all we do know, that one could not have done away with them without falling into …
Psyches travels to a city where one sister’s husband lives; she tells her sister Cupid’s revelation, the sisters’ envy turns to suicide-by-falling from the rock, and Psyches later learns the sisters are dead and Cupid is in Venus’s chamber.
so bold as to burne the god of all fire? When as he invented thee, to the intent that all lovers might with more joy passe the nights in pleasure. The god beeing burned in this sort, and perceiving that promise and faith was broken, hee fled away without utterance of any word, from the eyes and hands of his most unhappy wife. But Psyches fortuned to catch him as hee was rising by the right thigh, and held him fast a…
Pliny mourns Corellius Rufus, describing his suicide during a long, hereditary gout ordeal, and recounts Pliny visiting him in Domitian’s reign when Corellius sought death after severe pain.
VIII -- To CALESTRIUS TIRO I HAVE suffered the heaviest loss; if that word be sufficiently strong to express the misfortune which has deprived me of so excellent a man. Corellius Rufus is dead; and dead, too, by his own act! A circumstance of great aggravation to my affliction: as that sort of death which we cannot impute either to the course of nature, or the hand of Providence, is, of all others, the most to be la…
Pliny writes from Rome that he is detained by anxiety over Titus Aristo’s long illness, praising his learning and virtue, and describing Aristo’s readiness to end his life if doctors see no hope.
XVI -- To CATILIUS SEVERUS [27] I AM at present (and have been a considerable time) detained in Rome, under the most stunning apprehensions. Titus Aristo,[28] whom I have a singular admiration and affection for, is fallen into a long and obstinate illness, which troubles me. Virtue, knowledge, and good sense, shine out with so superior a lustre in this excellent man that learning herself, and every valuable endowmen…
Pliny mourns Corellius Rufus’s suicide, explaining why self-killing is especially painful, recounting his long illness and fortitude, and describing how Corellius tried to die at least a day before Domitian.
genuine friends. But his battle against ill-health had been so long and hopeless that all these splendid rewards of living were outweighed by the reasons that urged him to die. I have heard him say that he was first attacked by gout in the feet when he was thirty-three years of age. He had inherited the complaint, for it often happens that a tendency to disease is handed down like other qualities in a sort of succe…
Pliny recounts Corellius Rufus’s final days: he worsened, refused food for several days after a fixed resolve, told Pliny through intermediaries, and died by snapping his bonds to life.
then feeling that he could die without anxiety and as a free man ought, he snapped the bonds that bound him to life. Though they were many, he preferred death. His malady had become worse, though he tried to moderate it by his careful diet, and then, as it still continued to grow, he escaped from it by a fixed resolve. Two, three, four days passed and he refused all food. Then his wife Hispulla sent our mutual fri…
Eumolpus praises Giton and offers himself as guardian, provoking the narrator’s jealousy; after the narrator locks himself to commit suicide, Eumolpus and Giton interrupt, and Giton theatrically slashes his throat with a dull razor.
"Happy the mother," cried Eumolpus, "who bore such a son as you! May your fortune be in keeping with your merit! Beauty and wisdom are rarely found mixed! And that you may not think that all your words are wasted, know that you have found a lover! I will fill my verses with your praise! I will act as your guardian and your tutor, following you even when you bid me stay behind! Nor can Encolpius take offense, he …
Criseyde’s distress turns to a full suicide threat: she claims she will go into mourning, refuse food and drink, and mourn her separation from Troilus after his death.
my bane be, Than shal no mete or drinke come in me 775 Til I my soule out of my breste unshethe; And thus my-selven wol I do to dethe. `And, Troilus, my clothes everichoon Shul blake been, in tokeninge, herte swete, That I am as out of this world agoon, 780 That wont was yow to setten in quiete; And of myn ordre, ay til deeth me mete, …
Troilus, having seen Criseyde taken from him, draws his sword intending to kill himself, curses Love and Fortune, and calls on figures like Mynos, Fortune, and Attropos before attempting suicide.
world agoon; 1180 And whan he seigh ther was non other woon, He gan hir limes dresse in swich manere As men don hem that shul be leyd on bere. And after this, with sterne and cruel herte, His swerd a-noon out of his shethe he twighte, 1185 Him-self to sleen, how sore that him smerte, So that his sowle hir sowle folwen mighte, Ther-as the doom of Mynos…
Criseyde revives or fears him, explaining that Troilus would have killed himself by mistake, then proposes they delay and plan their reunion after she is gone from Troy.
folye and encrees of peyne; And sin that here assembled be we tweyne To finde bote of wo that we ben inne, It were al tyme sone to biginne. 1260 `I am a womman, as ful wel ye woot, And as I am avysed sodeynly, So wol I telle yow, whyl it is hoot. Me thinketh thus, that nouther ye nor I Oughte half this wo to make skilfully. 1265 …
A goatherd courting Amaryllis laments her coldness, offers apples and promises, cites famous lovers to argue love’s power, threatens suicide, and finally decides he will die where he falls.
them. Ah, Tityrus, my dearly beloved, feed thou the goats, and to the well-side lead them, Tityrus, and ’ware the yellow Libyan he-goat, lest he butt thee with his horns. Ah, lovely Amaryllis, why no more, as of old, dust thou glance through this cavern after me, nor callest me, thy sweetheart, to thy side. Can it be that thou hatest me? Do I seem snub-nosed, now thou hast seen me near, maiden, and under-hung? Th…
Pampirus tells of being pressed by his father, going into trading, losing everything by shipwreck, losing his wife, and then considering hanging himself or entering monasteries.
*Gl.* I pity thee. But what did you propose to yourself after that? *Pa.* To do as it is usual in desperate Cases. My Father had cast me off, my Fortune was consum'd, my Wife was lost, I was every where call'd a Sot, a Spendthrift, a Rake and what not? Then I began to deliberate seriously with myself, whether I should hang myself or no, or whether I should throw myself into a Monastery. *Eu.* You were cruelly put t…