Citation

van Hooff AJ. Crisis 1993; 14(2): 76-82.

Affiliation

Nijmegen University, Department of Classics, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, International Association for Suicide Prevention, Publisher Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8252928

Abstract

Attitudes toward suicide have not always been the same as they are today, and understanding the ideas of other cultures and times could enable us to reexamine contemporary conceptions of self-killing. Greek and Roman personal testimonies were examined to investigate the thesis that ancients did not see suicide as caused by psychic or emotional forces. Indeed, though the documents of antiquity give us a closer look into personal motives, they demonstrate that even would-be self-killers themselves wished to regard suicide as a rational act of volition.

Language: en