Attitudes toward Suicide in Ancient Greece

Abstract

In his authoritative study Miasma, Robert Parker defines a kind of institution, the metaphysical justification for a set of conventional responses to the disruption of life through violent death.' It is not so much a rationalization as a vehicle for expressing social disruption. Suicide, as a violent death, threatens to pollute society at large. Parker, however, assigns extra pollution to suicides, i.e., beyond that associated with death of any kind, and which obviously derives from that same moral revulsion against suicide that caused punitive measures to be taken against the corpse.2 Parker's brief and sweeping statement about the punishment of the corpses of suicides raises significant questions about the typical ancient attitude towards suicide, and it is important to reexamine the evidence Parker has collected, and to create a larger picture of attitudes towards suicide in antiquity by examining sources he omits.3 The sources on suicide in ancient Greece provide complex and I Miasma. Pollution and Purifcation in Early Greek Religion (Oxford 1983)