Senicide in antiquity

Senicide is the abandonment to death or killing of the elderly. It is a form of euthanasia.

The societies of antiquity viewed suicide and euthanasia much differently than does modern American culture. Although factors such as better medical and psychological insight have affected contemporary society’s view of suicide and euthanasia, much of the shift in opinion of these forms of death occurred because of the change in religion — that is, Greco-Roman society was dominated by pagan religions that did not categorically condemn suicide and euthanasia. Modern American society however, is one in which the prevailing religion, Christianity, does find fault in the taking of one’s own life, whether with one's own hands or with assistance, because Christianity holds that only God has control over a person’s life and death.

Greek and Roman religion did not approach the afterlife as a system of reward and punishment. Instead, the souls of the dead were relegated to the underworld where they would spend the rest of eternity. In these religions, a proper burial was needed to ensure that the dead person’s soul would rest in the underworld; the reason behind the person’s death, such as illness or a heroic death in battle, was irrelevant, provided a proper burial was performed, the soul would enter the underworld.

Whereas the religion of antiquity seems to take a lackadaisical stance on suicide and euthanasia, ancient philosophical thoughts varied greatly. Plato bifurcates suicide in Laws: although killing oneself out of grief, misfortune, or state injunction is acceptable, to commit suicide “owing to sloth and unmanly cowardice” requires purification rituals and demands that the body be buried without an epitaph.

Aristotle viewed suicide as an unjust act: “when a man in violation of the law harms another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he acts unjustly.”  Thus, for a man to harm himself, Aristotle reasons, is an unjust act.

Pythagorean doctrine held that all creatures were being punished by the gods who imprisoned the creatures’ souls in a body. Thus, any attempt to alter this punishment would be seen as a direct violation of the gods’ wills. In the fourth century BC, the Hippocratic Oath was developed and reads, “I will not give a fatal draught to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest any such thing.” Through the lens of the Hippocratic Oath, euthanasia was strictly forbidden. However, one of the most famous examples of deviation from this code occurred when the physician of Seneca, a philosopher and tutor of Nero, provided the philosopher, who was sixty-nine at the time, with poison for his one of his many failed attempts at suicide.

Societal views and legal repercussions also varied greatly. At different times in antiquity, Athens approached the problem of dealing with the bodies of those who committed suicide in various ways. Aischines, an Athenian statesman of the fourth century BC, writes that the right hand of the person was cut off to ensure that the soul could cause no malevolence. At a later point in history, Plutarch, a Greek historian living in the latter half of the first century AD, writes that “the public officers cast out the bodies of those who have been put to death, and carry forth the garments and the nooses of those who have dispatched themselves by hanging,” placing them together in the same location. In Massalia, present day Marseilles, Livy writes, anyone wanting to commit suicide simply needed to seek permission from the Senate: a successful plea would gain the person free hemlock for his act.

Focusing on “old people”, van Hoof writes that, of the 960 cases he explores, 87 address the motives of old people to commit suicide. Of these suicides, twenty three percent were motivated by impatience, twenty percent by humiliation, fourteen percent by vanity, and eleven percent by suffering. Van Hoof also provides statistics for the manner of the suicide, both successful and unsuccessful. Starvation was the most widely used, accounting for thirty percent of the sixty-one cases available. Suicide via the use of weapons was second most prevalent making up twenty-one percent of the cases, followed by the use of poison in eighteen percent of the cases. The use of various methods (seven different methods are reported in all) suggests that no particular technique was believed to be the most proper or entirely condemned. However, that Athens had a law focusing on suicide by hanging indicates that this manner of suicide was especially disdained, perhaps because the death was intimately connected with a structure that could not be easily removed, such as a tree. Thus, the act of purification, should it be deemed necessary, would be more difficult to perform.

Senicide as an institutionalized practice, however, seems to be much less common in ancient Rome and Greece. Parkin provides eighteen cases of senicide which the people of antiquity believed to happen. Of these cases, only two of them occur within Greek society, one within Roman society, and the rest falling outside of these two cultures. One example that Parkin provides is of the island of Keos in the Aegean Sea. Although many different variations of the Keian story exist, the legendary practice may have begun when the Athenians besieged the island. In an attempt to preserve the food supply, the Keians voted for all people over sixty years of age to commit suicide by drinking hemlock. The other case of Greek senicide occurred on the island of Sardinia, where human sacrifices of fathers seventy years old were made by their sons to the god Cronus.

The case of institutionalized senicide occurring in Rome comes from a proverb stating that sixty year olds were to be thrown from the bridge. Whether or not this act occurred in reality was highly disputed in antiquity and continues to be doubted today. The most comprehensive explanation of the tradition comes from Festus writing in the fourth century AD who provides several different beliefs of the origin of the act, including human sacrifice by ancient Roman natives, a Herculean association, and the notion that older men should not vote because they no longer provided a duty to the state. This idea to throw older men into the river probably coincides with the last explanation given by Festus. That is, younger men did not want the older generations to overshadow their wishes and ambitions and, therefore, suggested that the old men should be thrown off of the bridge, where voting took place, and not be allowed to vote.

One of the most interesting aspects of suicide and euthanasia of older people in antiquity was the act’s general revolution around the age sixty. Whether or not the person exhibited characteristics attributed specifically to old people, they were put to death. This characteristic of the practice indicates the generally held notion that the age of sixty denotes old age and that old age denotes dispensability.