Voluntary deaths in Greek and Latin literature from the second to fourth centuries AD

Abstract

This thesis examines martyrdoms and suicides, or ‘voluntary deaths’ in Greek and Latin literature from the second to fourth centuries AD and analyses their similarities and differences to understand how they contributed to shaping contemporary social practices and beliefs. It attempts to bridge the gap between the study of martyrdom and the study of suicide by comparing accounts of martyrdom to stories of suicide in the same period. Taking a literary approach, and employing a narratological reading, this thesis proposes answers to the following questions: What are the rhetorical and thematic conventions of these narratives, and can they be referred to as similar? What do these descriptions reveal about social practices during this time, such as those associated with gender and sexuality? Can ideas about martyrdom be applied to suicide and vice versa? What do these literary similarities or differences reveal about how voluntary death was treated? Questions such as these have continued to be a source of contention for historians in martyrdom and suicide research. This thesis expands upon existing interpretative and theoretical models, such as those used by van Hooff (2002), Hill (2004), and Grig (2004), in order to increase the sophistication of modern understanding of ancient voluntary death and to contextualise stories about voluntary death within their own time and place. The primary goal of this thesis is therefore to explore what a comparative study of martyrdom and suicide accounts can tell us about the societies that produced them. In particular, it focuses on themes of power and chastity in relation to identity and gender and how they were presented in stories of voluntary death. I analyse how these deaths directly or indirectly contributed to shaping the practices and beliefs of men and women around these ideas in the second to fourth centuries AD. There are four texts analysed in relation to these themes: The Passion of Perpetua with Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and The Acts of Paul and Thekla with Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Story. Connecting the martyrdoms and suicides within these texts to ancient authors and audiences reveals that accounts of voluntary death must not be taken at face value, and that they should be interpreted more critically while acknowledging their literary functions.