Cicero

Any attempt to view the numerous individual instances of suicide recorded in our Latin sources as a coherent whole must begin with an analysis of the treatment of suicide and self-killing in the philosophical works of Cicero. In part this is simply an accident of transmission: Cicero is by far the best and most complete source of information we have on the tenets of the various Hellenistic philosophical schools, the original Greek writings of which are now largely lost. Cicero’s attempts to create a Latin philosophical corpus are frequently criticized as unoriginal and inadequately researched, but his broad focus and wide-ranging interests at least preserve for us the outlines of systems that would otherwise be known to us only in fragments. Cicero therefore provides us with a reasonably comprehensive overview of the philosophical perspectives on suicide available to the educated Roman in the period of the Late Republic. ¹