Attitudes toward suicide have varied through time and across cultures.
Antiquity to 1700
At times, suicide played a prominent role in ancient legend and history, like with Ajax the Great, who killed himself in the Trojan War, and Lucretia, whose suicide in around 510 B.C. initiated the revolt that displaced the Roman Kingdom with the Roman Republic. One early Greek historical person to die by suicide was Empedocles around 434 B.C. One of his beliefs was that death was a transformation. It is possible this idea influenced his suicide. Empedocles died by throwing himself into the Sicilian volcano Mount Etna.
In general, the pagan world, both Roman and Greek, had a relaxed attitude towards the concept of suicide. The Council of Arles (452) stated "if a slave commits suicide no reproach shall fall upon his master." There are some precursors of Christian hostility to suicide in ancient Greek thinkers. Pythagoras, for example, was against the act, though more on mathematical than moral grounds, believing that there was only a finite number of souls for use in the world, and that the sudden and unexpected departure of one would upset a delicate balance. Aristotle also condemned suicide, though for quite different reasons – in that it robbed the community of the services of one of its members. In Rome, suicide was never a general offense in law, though the whole approach to the question was essentially pragmatic. It was specifically forbidden in three cases: those accused of capital crimes, soldiers and slaves. The reason behind all three was the same – it was uneconomic for these people to die. If the accused killed themselves prior to trial and conviction then the state lost the right to seize their property, a loophole that was only closed by Domitian in the 1st century AD, who decreed that those who died prior to trial were without legal heirs. The suicide of a soldier was treated on the same basis as desertion. If a slave killed themselves within six months of purchase, the master could claim a full refund from the former owner.
The Romans, however, fully approved of what might be termed "patriotic suicide" – in other words, death as an alternative to dishonor. For the Stoics, a philosophical sect which originated in Greece, death was a guarantee of personal freedom, an escape from an unbearable reality that had nothing left to give. And so it was for Cato the Younger, who killed himself after the Pompeian cause was defeated at the Battle of Thapsus. This was a "virtuous death", one guided by reason and conscience. His example was later followed by Seneca, though under somewhat more straitened circumstances, as he had been ordered to do so on suspicion of being involved with the Pisonian conspiracy to kill Emperor Nero. A very definite line was drawn by the Romans between the virtuous suicide and suicide for entirely private reasons. They disapproved of Mark Antony not because he killed himself, but that he killed himself for love. In the medieval Baltics, particularly in pagan Lithuania before its 1387 conversion, suicide was often viewed as a ritualistic or "altruistic" act of honor. Historical chronicles depict a society where self-sacrifice was a culturally accepted response to defeat, grief, or extreme illness. In pagan Lithuania, suicide was not exclusively associated with men. According to an account by Johann, a Livonian priest captured by Lithuanians, a mass suicide of women occurred in 1205 after they learned that their men, who had taken part in a raid led by Duke Žvelgaitis, had been killed. Johann reported that fifty women hanged themselves, attributing the act to a belief that they would soon be reunited with the deceased in the afterlife. Some scholars suggest that double graves found in the territories of the Balts and other Indo-European peoples may reflect similar beliefs and practices, possibly indicating instances of ritual suicide by widows. Defeated warriors frequently chose death over captivity or slavery. The most famous instance occurred in 1336 at Pilėnai Castle where defenders reportedly killed their families and then themselves to avoid surrender to the Teutonic Knights. Continuing in the Middle Ages, many religions, including Islam and Christianity, considered suicide to be a sinful practice. Suicide was often recognized as a religious problem rather than a medical problem that could be prevented by treatment. The Christian church excommunicated people who attempted suicide, and those who died by suicide were buried outside consecrated graveyards. The Church had drawn-out discussions on the edge where the search for martyrdom was suicidal, as in the case of some of the martyrs of Córdoba.
Changes in attitude
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