Disgrace, grief and other ills: Herakles' rejection of suicide

Abstract

Although the incidence of suicide in classical antiquity has been studied for over a century, a proper methodological basis for such a study has been established only recently. The scholars who have been most concerned with this issue are Hirzel, Katsouris, Aigner, Walcot, Seidensticker, and, recently, van Hooff, and they have approached the topic in various ways. Although their interpretations have contributed to our knowledge of suicide in ancient Greece, they have rarely done more than analyse and classify examples of suicide as these occur in classical literature: we have not used our knowledge of the topic to re-examine the literature. The task of investigating the ways in which poets made use of contemporary notions about—and attitudes towards—suicide for their own dramatic purposes still needs to be carried out.