Plotinus, d. A.D. 270.
According to Morselli of Turin, the word “suicide” originated in France, in the middle of the last century.
In this matter he apparently copied French authors who claim that it was first used in the “Dictionnaire de Trevoux” (the town of Trevoux), by Desfontaines, in 1752. It appears along with Parricide in the “Dictionnaire de l’Academie Française,” of 1762.
Richelet, in his famous French Dictionary of 1680, has, I find, Parricide, but not Suicide.
So much for France. With regard to England, Archbishop Trench says, “Up to the middle of the seventeenth century our good writers use self-homicide, never suicide.” Nathan Bailey, in his English Dictionary, 2nd ed. 1736, gives the word “suicide.”
But the word is much older even than that; in the introduction to Edward Phillips’ “New World of Words,” dated 1662, these remarks are to be found: “One barbarous word I shall produce, which is suicide, a word which I had rather should be derived from sus, a sow, than from the pronoun sui, unless there be some mystery in it; as if it were a swinish part for a man to kill himself.” Some English Dictionaries, such as Wright’s, give the obsolete word “suicism.”
“Suicidium” looks like a Latin word, but is not so, although Nathan Bailey in the 30th edition of his Dictionary says it is; the modern term “Suicide,” is of course derived from the Latin words “sui,” self, and “cædo” to kill; but the ancient Romans, although familiar with the fact, used a phrase to express it. They said, “sibi mortem consciscere” (Cicero, Oratio pro Cluentio), “to procure his own death”; and “veneno mortem sibi consciscere” for “to poison himself,” or “to procure death for himself by poison.” They also used as alternative phrases “vim sibi inferre,” “to cause violence to himself,” Velleius Paterculus; “sua manu cadere,” Tacitus, Annales; and “mors voluntaria,” Cicero, Epistolæ ad familiares.
The ancient Greek phrase for “suicide,” was απολακτισμος βιου, Æschylus; “a suicide” was αυτοφονος, Æschylus; for our phrase “to commit suicide” they used a verb αυτοκτονεω, Sophocles.
Euripides uses αυτοκτονος: in Plato is found αυτοχειρια, and also in Euripides; two other forms of speech were εμαυτον διαχραομαι, Æschines, and εμαυτον βιαζομαι, Plato.
The Germans use the term “Selbstmord,” the Italians “il suicidio.”