Modelling Roman suicide? The afterlife of Cato

Abstract

This paper explores the idea of suicide as, under some circumstances, an act which may legitimately be witnessed, indeed demands to be witnessed, making it a proper subject for literary/artistic representation. For ancient Romans, a suicide might be honourable if it was felt to express the status of its agent as a moral witness. The death of Cato in 46 bce was celebrated in antiquity as the prime example of such a suicide. Cato's death was the subject of a highly successful stage play by Joseph Addison first staged in 1713. Addison's uneasy handling of Cato's death betrays the difficulty of presenting suicide as an inspirational spectacle of virtue in the context of early eighteenth-century Britain, where deliberate self-killing was treated as a crime and an offence against religion.

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