Valerius Maximus, Lib. 2, cap. 6, a Roman writer of the first century, circa A.D. 31, tells us that at Massilia, a colony, the Senate kept a supply of poison, which was distributed to applicants for the purpose of suicide, if the Senate thought their reasons sufficient. See Montaigne, Essais, Liv. iv., chap. 3.
Pliny the Elder, A.D. 79, says there are three diseases, to escape any one of which a man has a good title to destroy himself, and the worst of these is stone in the bladder; and he adds, “it is a privilege of man which Deity does not possess.”
Tacitus, d. A.D. 135, remarks that among the nobles, suicide was the frequent result of misfortune, or the public disgrace of falling under the displeasure of the Emperor.
Marcus Aurelius, circa A. D. 150, is said to have remarked that “a man had as much right to leave the world as he had to leave a room full of smoke.”
Diogenes Laertius, circa A. D. 220, tells us that the greatest leaders of men advised the wise to its commission. Lib. viii., i. 66.
Livy, Cæsar, and Tacitus mention that the warlike, semi-savage races who peopled North and West Europe, the Iberians, Gauls, Cimri, and Germans, were all much addicted to self-slaughter, especially in order to avoid slavery, and the shame of defeat.
Livy also speaks of its prevalence among the people of Northern Africa, in the time of Scipio, a Roman general, who was engaged in the Punic wars, and who had ample opportunities of observation in those countries.
Plutarch, in his Life of Alexander the Great, narrates the death of the Brahmin Calanus, who burned himself with much ceremony in the presence of the Macedonian army, and apparently without any particular reason.
The Brahmin Sages of the Hindoo races taught the virtues of suicide, as a mode of escape from the pangs of disease and the weakness of old age.
Josephus, in his “History of the Wars of the Jews,” Lib. vii., cap. 34, gives a full description of the frightful suicidal slaughter among them at the siege of Jerusalem, in which he himself was engaged, and in which self-destruction his faithful guard Simon begged him to participate, and after its capture, some thousands, under Eleazar, retired to the fortress of Massada, and there killed themselves to avoid falling into the hands of the Romans.