Suicide and self-harm myths

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Often appears with: the fear of death · heroic genealogy · ghosts and the returning dead · fate, destiny, and necessity · divine punishment · descent to the underworld · afterlife portraits

Usually: speech or oration (1) · confronting death (1) · lament (1)

The Odyssey of Homer primary

Homer · Composed in antiquity (date uncertain; likely 8th century BCE)
BOOK I. > BOOK XI. (6/13)

Odysseus describes to the Phaeacians the shades he saw in Hades, including Alcmene, Megara, Jocasta (Epicaste), Chloris, Oedipus’s mother, and other heroic wives and children, emphasizing divine fates and suffering.

Zethus, who founded first the place of seven-gated Thebes, and they made of it a fenced city, for they might not dwell in spacious Thebes unfenced, for all their valiancy. “Next to her I saw Alcmene, wife of Amphitryon, who lay in the arms of mighty Zeus, and bare Heracles of the lion-heart, steadfast in the fight. And I saw Megara, daughter of Creon, haughty of heart, whom the strong and tireless son of Amphitryon …