Abstract
In this paper, I will explain how a few Roman writers explore the process and contemplation that leads to suicide, particularly Lucretius through his work De Rerum Natura. I will contrast this Epicurean stance to Stoic perspectives using Vergil’s epic Aeneid, Seneca’s Epistles and Cicero’s Dream of Scipio and Tusculans. Each of these authors comments on the act of suicide and the social connotations that accompany self-murder, including its reception based on the suicide’s gender. These authors’ use of suicide and a person’s virtus shows how they perceive gender equality or inequality when it comes to death. All of the authors examined in this paper agree that the fear of the death is an important issue in the Roman world. Lucretius’ approach to encounter one’s fear of death is focus more on physics; this enables him to take a non-gendered approach because all humans are made up of the same atoms just in different compositions. However, Vergil, Seneca, and Cicero construct systems that examine the fear of death from a more ethical side. I will explain that, unlike his contemporaries, Lucretius portrays suicide and the fear of death through specifically gender-neutral references to dispel its fear from all his readers; he explains that everyone experiences the same death and we can all attain virtus before death through subscribing to Epicurean ideals.Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (linked here). By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are available for wide dissemination at no cost to readers, with proper attribution (acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal), in educational and other non-commercial settings. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. However, for undergraduates authoring a manuscript under the guidance of a faculty member or research mentor, we strongly encourage the student to discuss with the faculty mentor and the Editor if prior publication in the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal will constrain future publication efforts in professional journals. To this end, all authors must submit a signed mentor consent form at the time of submission..