The Spartans, that brave and hardy race, are known to have disapproved of Suicide; it is narrated that an honourable burial was refused to Artemidorus, who sacrificed his life unnecessarily at the battle of Platœa, which was fought B. C. 479, between the united Greeks and the Persians. Among the suicides of Greece, however, occur the names of some of her greatest men, lawgivers, orators, generals, philosophers, and statesmen; although we find in Greek custom more condemnation of the practice than in Roman law.
In Thebes, it was a custom that no honours should be paid at the death of a suicide, and no funeral rites were allowed; the body was ordered to be burned in the absence of the relatives of the deceased.
At Athens, a suicide was not allowed to be burned and his ashes preserved, as was the custom for the rich and great, if such died in war, or by a natural death. See Samuel Petit, “De Legibus Atticis.”
The body was buried instead, and the right hand struck off and buried in a separate place. See Æschines, Ctesiphon, and in Plato, Laws, Book ix., regulations are laid down for the burial of suicides.
Aristotle, in his Ethics, v., cap. xi., describes his views of the crime, calling it a “sin against the state,” and adds that the memory of the Suicide should be marked by infamy.
A reference to the List of Notable Suicides which follows in Chapter III., will show that persons of the highest intelligence have committed suicide at each epoch of ancient history.
In a survey of the history of Rome we find mention of an Epidemic of Suicide among the soldiers of Tarquin the First; they were ordered to the task of excavating sewers in Rome, and believing this work to be derogatory to their dignity, they killed themselves in large numbers: the tendency was checked by an edict that the bodies of all suicides should be exposed to public view nailed on crosses. See Pliny, Nat. Hist., Book xxvi. cap. xv.
But in the very long period during which the Roman state was advancing to greatness, and throughout the times of the Republic, suicide was a very rare occurrence.
In the later part of Rome’s history, during the empire, it became a very prominent crime; when luxury and sloth predominated, and the doctrines of the philosophers Zeno and Epicurus became fashionable, suicide became rampant. In the reigns of Claudius, A.D. 42, and Nero, A.D. 55, even Seneca, that cultured villain, acknowledged its practice to be excessively frequent, although he ultimately committed the act himself. At this time the prevailing sentiment was thus tersely expressed, “Mori licet cui vivere non placet,” in the language of the Stoic school.
But throughout the whole history of Rome there was no statute declaring it to be either a crime or a misdemeanour, and no punishment for the attempt, among the people; but the soldiers of the state were restrained by a Military Law, and the attempt punished by ignominy. One such statute was published by the Emperor Hadrian, A.D. 138. See Digest of Roman Law, “De re militari.”