The Complete Essays (63 page)

Among those who maintained the first alternative there was considerable uncertainty over what occasions could fully justify anyone deciding to take his own life. (They called that an
[a
reasonable exodus
]).
¹⁹
They say in fact that one ought to end one’s life for quite minor causes, since the causes which keep us alive are not very strong either; but there has to be a degree of moderation.

There have been fantastical and baseless humours which have driven not only individual men but whole peoples to do away with themselves. I have already cited some examples; we can read in addition of those maidens of Miletus who conspired in their frenzy to hang themselves one after another until the magistrates considered the matter and commanded that any found hanging should be dragged by the same rope naked through the city.
²⁰

Threicion urged Cleomenes
²¹
to kill himself because of the sorry state of his affairs: as he had fled from a most honourable death in the battle he had just lost, he should accept this other one which abounds in honour for him, and give the victors no opportunity of making him suffer a shameful death or a shameful life. Cleomenes, with a Stoic Spartan courage, rejected this counsel as weak and effeminate: ‘That is a remedy,’ he said, ‘that I will never be without but which no one should use while there remains a finger’s breadth of hope,’ adding that to go on living sometimes requires valour and constancy and that he wished his very death to be of service to his country; he intended to make it an honourable and virtuous deed. Threicion took his own advice and killed himself. Cleomenes did the same later on, but only after assaying the very worse that Fortune can do.

All ills are not worth our avoiding them by death. Moreover, there are so many sudden reversals in the affairs of men that it is not easy to judge at what point it is right to abandon hope:

[B]
Sperat et in sæva victus gladiator arena,
Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax
.

[Even when lying vanquished on the cruel sand, while the menacing crowd in the arena turn their thumbs round, the gladiator still hopes on.]
²²

[A] There is an ancient saying that anything can be hoped for while a man is still alive. But Seneca replies, ‘Ah yes; but why should I recall that Fortune can do all things for one who remains alive rather than that other saying, that Fortune can impose nothing on one who knows how to die?’
²³

We can read how Josephus
²⁴
was involved in a danger so clear and so imminent (with an entire nation in revolt against him) that he could not reasonably hope for relief; yet, as he tells us, he was advised at this juncture to do away with himself but was right as it turned out to cling stubbornly to hope, for Fortune so changed the entire situation beyond any human foresight that he found himself delivered from danger quite unharmed. Brutus and Cassius on the other hand, by the precipitous haste with which they killed themselves before the time or circumstances were right, brought about the final loss of the remnants of that Roman freedom which it was
their duty to protect.
²⁵
– [C] I have seen hundreds of hares escape from the very jaws of the greyhounds:
‘Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit.’
[A man has been known to outlive his executioner.]
²⁶

[B]
Multa dies variusque labor mutabilis ævi
Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens
Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit
.

[Time in her wavering course has often produced great changes for the better; and Fortune, altering her course, has sported with men and restored them again to solid prosperity.]
²⁷

[A] Pliny lists three kinds of illness which man can justly avoid by killing himself: the harshest of them all is a stone in the bladder with retention of urine;
²⁸
[C] Seneca only allows those illnesses which chronically affect the faculties of the soul. [A] Others maintain that death is always permitted at man’s discretion, to avoid a worse one.
²⁹

[C] Damocritus, the leader of the Aetolians, was led prisoner to Rome; one night he succeeded in escaping but being pursued by his guards he fell on his sword before they could recapture him.
³⁰
When the city of Epirus was reduced to the last extremity by the Romans, Antinous and Theodotus advised mass suicide; but once the counsel to surrender prevailed they went and sought death, rushing upon the enemy, intent on striking blows not on protecting themselves.
³¹

A few years ago when the island of Gosso was stormed by the Turks, a Sicilian with two beautiful nubile daughters killed them both and then killed their mother who came running up at their death. Once he had done that, he went out into the street with a crossbow and a harquebus; with two shots he killed the first two Turks who came near his door; he then grabbed a sword and threw himself furiously into a skirmish where he was
quickly surrounded and cut to pieces, saving himself from slavery after having first delivered his family from it.
³²

[A] Fleeing from the cruelty of Antiochus Jewish women, after circumcizing their infants, jumped to their deaths with them.
³³

I was told this tale about a prisoner from a good family in one of our French gaols: his parents, upon hearing that he would certainly be condemned to death, avoided such an ignominious end by procuring a priest to tell him that he had a sovereign way of escape: he should commend himself to a particular saint, making such and such a vow, then go a whole week without food, no matter how weak or faint he felt. He trusted him and, without realizing what he was doing, rid himself of life and subjection.

Scribonia advised her nephew Libo to kill himself rather than await the hand of Justice, telling him he was doing other people’s work for them if he preserved his life merely to surrender it three or four days later into the hands of those who would come looking for it: he would be serving his enemies if he kept his own life-blood to be thrown to their dogs.
³⁴

We read in the Bible of Nicanor, a persecutor of God’s law, who sent his guards to seize the good old man named Raxias, who in honour of his virtue ‘was called the Father of the Jews’. When that good man saw no other way, once his gate was in flames and the enemy about to seize him, ‘he struck himself with his sword, choosing to die nobly rather than to fall into the hands of the wicked and to be treated like a dog, in a manner unworthy of his noble birth: but whereas through haste he missed giving himself a sure wound, he ran to the wall through the throng and threw himself down into the crowd; but, as they made room for his fall, he fell straight on his head. Nevertheless, feeling there was still some life in him, he inflamed his heart, staggered to his feet all bloody under the weight of the blows, ran through the crowd and charged towards a certain rock, steep and precipitous, where with no strength left he thrust both hands through a wound, grasped his bowels, tore them out and squashed them together and cast them at his pursuers,’ calling God’s vengeance down upon them and bearing witness to it.
³⁵

Of all the violences done to the conscience the one most to be avoided, it
seems to me, is violence against the chastity of women, since an element of bodily pleasure is naturally in it for them. For this reason their resistance cannot be abolutely complete and it would seem that the rape may be mingled with a kind of willingness. Pelagia and Sophronia have both been canonized:
³⁶
the first cast herself and her mother and sisters into the river to avoid rape by a group of soldiers, while the other killed herself to avoid being raped by the Emperor Maxentius. [C] Ecclesiastical history reveres several examples of devout persons who sought death as a protection from outrages against their conscience prepared by tyrants.

[A] Future centuries may honour us for having a learned author in our days (a Parisian be it noted) who has gone to some pains to persuade the ladies today to take any other way out rather than to accept such a horrifying counsel of despair.
³⁷
I am only sorry he did not know the story I heard in Toulouse so that he could include it in his tales; it concerns a woman who had passed through the hands of a group of soldiers: ‘God be praised,’ she said, ‘that at least once in my life I have been satisfied without sin.’

But such cruelties are truly unworthy of French courtesy; thank God our climate has been thoroughly purged of them since that sound piece of advice – the rule of good old Marot: it is enough for women to say ‘No, no!’ while doing it.
³⁸

History is full of people who have, in thousands of ways, exchanged a pain-filled life for death. [B] Lucius Aruntius killed himself, ‘to escape’, he said, ‘from the future
and
the past’.
³⁹
[C] Granius Silvanus and Statius Proximus killed themselves after being pardoned by Nero so as not to live by the grace of so wicked a man, or else so as not to have to beg for a second pardon seeing the ease with which he suspected and accused all men of honour.
⁴⁰

Spargapises, the son of Queen Tomyris, was taken prisoner by Cyrus; released of his bonds, he exploited this very first favour that Cyrus had granted him to kill himself, never having intended any other profit from his freedom than to atone with his life for the shame of his capture.
⁴¹

Bogez, who was Governor of Eon on behalf of King Xerxes, was besieged by the Athenian army under the leadership of Cimon but refused the suggested terms of a safe-conduct to Persia for him and his goods since he could not bear to survive the loss of what his Master had placed under his guard; and after having defended his city to the very end when there was nothing more left to eat, he first threw into the river Strymon all the gold and everything else which he thought the enemy might take as booty; then, having ordered a huge pyre to be lighted and the throats of his wife, children, concubines and servants to be slit, he cast them, and then himself, into the flames.
⁴²

Ninachetuen, an Indian Lord, when he first got wind of the Portuguese Viceroy’s intention to strip him, for no apparent reason, of the office he filled in Malacca so as to bestow it on the King of Campar, privately resolved to act as follows: he had a scaffold erected, longer than it was wide, supported on columns, royally carpeted with flowers and decorated with an abundance of sweet-smelling woods. Then, having donned a robe of cloth-of-gold laden with precious stones of great price, he issued forth into the street and mounted the steps of the scaffold in the corner of which burned a pyre of aromatic wood. Everyone ran out to see what these unusual preparations might portend. With a countenance both brave and angry, he recalled what the Portuguese people owed to him; how faithfully he had carried out his duties; how, for the sake of others, he had often borne witness, weapon in hand, that honour was much dearer to him than life; he was not going to give up caring for honour in his own case; but, although Fortune denied him any way of resisting the insult they intended to do him, his mind told him to remove his power of feeling it or of serving as a fable to the people and as a triumph for persons less worthy than himself. So saying he threw himself into the fire.
⁴³

[B] Sextilia the wife of Scaurus, and Paxea the wife of Labeo, to encourage their husbands to avoid the dangers which beset them and in which they personally were not concerned except as loving wives, voluntarily took their own lives so as to serve them as examples in their dire necessity and to keep them company.

What they did for their husbands Coceius Nerva did for his country, less usefully but with just as much love. That great jurisconsult, in the full
bloom of health, wealth, reputation and respect from the Emperor, killed himself for no other reason than compassion for the wretched condition of the Roman Republic.

Nothing could surpass the delicacy shown by the death of the wife of Fulvius, the close friend of Augustus. One morning Augustus, having learned that Fulvius had let out a vital secret entrusted to him, gave him a meagre welcome when he came to see him. Fulvius returned home in despair and told his wife piteously that he had resolved to kill himself for having fallen into this misfortune. She frankly replied: ‘That is only right, seeing that you have had enough experience of the indiscipline of my tongue, yet it did not put you on your guard. But wait; let me kill myself first.’ Then without more ado she thrust the sword through her body.