Representations of Suicide in Latin Sepulchral Inscriptions and Epigrams

Abstract

In the Latin funerary inscriptions we often meet the motif of taedium vitae. Would this indicate that there are more suicides in Latin sepulchral literature than in Greek epitaphs? Given the prevalence of taedium vitae, it may be surprising that we have slightly fewer „suicidal” Latin epitaphs than Greek. However, almost all of them are clearly suicidal, whereas in the Greek epitaphs in many instances we can only suspect the case of suicide. Concerning the epigrammatic evidence, in contrast to the Greek epigram material, in Latin literature there are few epigrams which deal with suicide. This can be explained by the fact that the Latin epigram literature is far less rich than the Greek. There are few Latin epigrams that can be evaluated as literary epitaphs, and even fewer on the subject of suicide. In our study, we will first examine the „real” epitaphs and then examine how the few available „sepulchral” epigrams represent suicide.