Although the distinctive - and sometimes bizarre - means by which Roman aristocrats often chose to end their lives has attracted some scholarly attention in the past, most writers on the subject have been content to view this a s an irrational and inexplicable aspect of Roman culture. In this book, T.D. Hill traces the cultural logic which animated these suicides, describing the meaning and significance of such deaths in their original cultural context. Covering the writing of most major Latin authors between Lucretius and Lucan, this book argues that the significance of the 'noble death' in Roman culture cannot be understood if the phenomenon is viewed in the context of modern ideas of the nature of the self.

motw/Ambitiosa Mors_ Suicide and the - Timothy Hill.epub

motw/Ambitiosa Mors_ Suicide and the - Timothy Hill.pdf

zlib/no-category/Hill, T. D.;/Ambitiosa Mors_29660236.epub

Timothy David Hill

Ashgate Publishing Limited

Taylor & Francis Ltd

Gower Publishing Ltd

Studies in classics (Routledge (Firm)), v. 10, New York, 2004

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

July 30, 2004

1, PS, 2004

Memory of the World Librarian: outernationale

The title of this book contains two terms endowed with considerable
potential to mislead the reader. Central to the argument of this study
is the claim that the words "suicide" and "self" must both be
systematically redefined if they are to prove useful to the
interpretation of Roman culture. Their employment is, if problematic,
nevertheless necessary and unavoidable for precise discussion of the
phenomenon which it is the chief concern of this study to explain: that
throughout the Late Republic and Julio-Claudian Principate the members
of the Roman aristocracy, at the historical moment in which that class
was at its most powerful and influential, had a pronounced tendency to
die in theatrical and unusual ways. Not the least strange aspect of
these often grotesque and painful deaths is that they were generally
entered upon deliberately and inflicted by the victim's own hand. So
frequent are these dramatic voluntary deaths in the annals of Roman
history that such behavior became for later ages a stereotypical
attribute of the Roman national character,1 and even in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries the concept of the Romana mors-the "Roman
death"-has remained something of a 'modern myth.'2 For anyone with a
more than passing acquaintance with Latin literature the phrase "a Roman
death" readily evokes certain well-defined and familiar images-the
defeated general falling upon his sword, the senator holding his wrists
out for incision by his Greek physician-ubiquitous in Late Republican
and Early Imperial writings
**
Review
"it fully realizes its claim to deepen our understanding of ancient suicide by making self-killing practices of the Roman elite of the Early Principate part of the ancient category of good dying, euthanatein in the classical sense."
-Anton J.L. van Hooff, Nijmegen University, "Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 09/2005

Discussed under the rubric of "suicide," the character and frequency of this kind of death in our sources has caused consternation amongst modern researchers.

2024-08-28