Death Becomes Her: Female Suicide in Flavian Epic

Abstract

ecce inter medios caedum Tiburna furoresfulgenti dextram mucrone armata maritiet laeua infelix ardentem lampada quassanssqualentemque erecta comam ac liuentia planctupectora nudatis ostendens saeua lacertisad tumulum Murri super ipsa cadauera fertur.(Punica2.665-70)Look! Tiburna, into the middle of the raging of slaughter, having armed her right hand with the shining sword of her husband and, unhappy, shaking a burning torch with her left, filthy hair standing up and ferociously baring her arms to reveal breasts bruised from beating, she forces her way over the corpses themselves to the tomb of Murrus.So Silius reintroduces the figure of Tiburna into the mass suicide at Saguntum inPunica2 before concluding with a description of her suicide. The fury that surrounds Tiburna is not surprising of a female figure in Latin epic, yet her suicide in this context is perhaps at odds with the literary tradition in that it is not the result of erotic passion but political despair. The suicide of female figures has a long literary tradition going back to Greek tragedy (Antigone, Deianira, Phaedra) as well as the Roman paradigms, Lucretia and Dido. In the epics of the Flavian period, Statius, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus all offer up their own depiction of female characters who take their own lives. But unlike their literary sisters, whose suicides are an aspect of or the result of their gender, the Flavian epic heroines commit suicidedespitetheir gender, a phenomenon that demands explanation.