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1 I am grateful to Matthew Santirocco and the anonymous referees for Clas-sical World for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. See H. Bergson, Le rire (Paris 1913) 3.

2 S. Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sig-mund Freud, Vol. 5, tr. J. Stratchey (London 1960) 159–61.

3 For a short survey of suicide jokes in genres other than comedy, see A. J. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-killing in Classical Antiquity (London 1990) 148–50. Suicide in the palliata received so far only perfunctory attention: A. G. Katsouris (“The Suicide Motif in Ancient Drama,” Dioniso 47 [1976] 5-36, here 25-33) cites examples to supplement his discussion of New Comedy. Y. Grisé (Le suicide dans la Rome antique. [Montréal and Paris, 1982] 234–36) brief ly comments on the nonchalance of comedic characters considering suicide. R. Basaglia (“Il suicidio per burla nella comedia plautina,” Studi Urbinati B3 linguistica, letteratura, arte [1991] 277–92) has collected allusions to suicide in Plautus, distinguishing between burlesque jokes made by “characters from the lower classes” (278–81) and para-tragic allusions made by “characters from upper classes” (283–89). D. Dutsch (Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy: On Echoes and Voices [Oxford 2008] 136–37) discusses gendered associations of suicide discourse in Roman comedy, but pays little attention to humor and makes no distinction between the threat of suicide and the act itself.

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Genre, Gender, and Suicide ThreaTS in roman comedy

ABSTRACT: Several frustrated lovers in Roman comedy threaten to kill themselves, but of course never act on their threats. In this paper, I (1) situate the parasuicidal amator within the literary tradition of Greek trag-edy, its Roman adaptations, and the praetexta, and (2) ask how gendered connotations of suicide contribute to the humor of empty threats. Particu-larly poignant is the comedy’s relationship to the praetexta and the logic of sacrif ice for the sake of collective values. When juxtaposed to heroic and manly acts of self-inf licted death, the comic lover’s weakness comes to sharp focus.

I. IntroductionIn his essay on laughter, Henri Bergson observes that, in order

to appreciate humor, we must suspend, at least temporarily, any sentiments of pity or sympathy.1 In “Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious” Sigmund Freud goes even further, theorizing that humorous pleasure arises precisely at the cost of an affect that does not occur. He suggests that situations which could potentially call for an emotional response, but that do not realize this potential, are the prime source of humor.2 A similar mechanism is arguably at work in suicide jokes found in ancient comedy. Recall, for ex-ample, Heracles in Aristophanes’ Frogs (116–135), who advises the god Dionysus that the fastest roads to the underworld are Hanging, Jumping, or Poisoning. The skinny old slave Staphyla in Plautus’ Aulularia (77–78) jokes that, if she were to hang herself, her body would take the shape of the letter “I.”3

My focus in this paper is on one specific strain of such humor: references to suicide found in the discourse of star-crossed lovers in the fabula palliata. Plautus and Terence differ radically in their treatment of this motif: while Plautus tends to dwell on the descrip-tions of the lover’s misery and imagined demise (Cist. 639–41, Mer.

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469–73), Terence prefers very discreet allusions to “matters of life and death” (Ph. 483). Yet the presence of this motif in both authors indicates that their audiences found threats of suicide over disap-pointments in love entertaining. This paper is an attempt to recover the emotional tensions involved in humor created at the expense of such lovers, and to situate this humor within the discourse of suicide that can be recovered from contemporary tragedy.

Since my material is derived from Roman comedy “in Greek clothing,” I will outline the Greek models of suicide over love be-fore analyzing the “speech situations” in which the Roman amator announces his suicidal intentions. I will then compare his attitude to suicide with the views expressed by women and slaves—the con-ventional “others” relative to citizen males in classical antiquity.4 Finally, I will juxtapose the perceptions of suicide found in com-edy with those found in the fragments of republican tragedy and in the fabula praetexta.5 In combining a close reading of the relevant scenes from comedy with examination of excerpts from the two other genres, I hope both to offer insights into the humor of the palliata and to shed some light on the attitudes of Plautus’ and Terence’s contemporaries towards voluntary death.

II. Greek DramaGreek sources generally dissociate the act of suicide from manly

bravery.6 In particular, suicide caused by love or poverty, was, in Aristotle’s view, an act of cowardice and a proof of unmanly weak-ness (μαλακία).7 Female suicide was prevalent in Greek myth and (consequently) tragedy.8 But it is important to note that, as Loraux points out, the courage to follow the “last path” was reserved for heroic women.9 Three tragic heroines commit suicide for love: Pha-edra in Euripides’ Hippolytus, Euadne in his Suppliants, Alcestis in

4 Drawing on the work of D. Hymes (“The Ethnography of Speaking,” in T. Gladwin and W. Sturtevant, eds., Anthropology and Human Behavior [Washington 1962] 15–53) and J. Gumpertz (Discourse Strategies [New York 1982]), I use the term “speech situation” to denote exchanges made meaningful by culturally specific structures, in this case, the stylized conversational rules and set stock of characters of the palliata.

5 On Roman attitudes to suicide in general, see H. N. Parker (“Crucially Funny or Tranio on the Couch: The Servus callidus and Jokes about Torture,” TAPA 119 [1983] 120); R. S. J. Garland (The Greek Way of Death [London 1985] 98); Van Hooff (above, n.3) 21–26.

6 E. P. Garrison (“Attitudes toward Suicide in Ancient Greece” TAPA 121 [1991] 1-43) discusses various literary testimonies to suicide in inscriptions and literature and analyzes the prescriptive evidence in the writings of Plato and Aristotle.

7 E.N. 3.7: 1116a 12; see Plato’s condemnation of suicide motivated by “lazi-ness and unmanly cowardice” was inexcusable (Laws, 9.873c). On this topic see, M. Murray “Plato on Suicide,” Phoenix 55 3/4 (2001) 244–58.

8 On myth, see Van Hooff (above, n.3) 23–25 and his references; on Greek tragedy, Katsouris (above, n.3) 9n8.

9 See N. Loraux (Façons tragiques de tuer une femme [Paris 1985] and Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman [1987]). In Euripides’ Troades, for example, Helen is criticized for not ending her own life (1012–1014).

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Euripides’ play named after her, and Deianeira in Sophocles’ Tra-chiniae. Since the only male character to die for love in our extant tragedies—young Haemon in Sophocles’ Antigone—is criticized as being “inferior to a woman,” it is reasonable to conclude that suicide committed for love was construed as unworthy of a tragic hero.10

Heroic standards do not apply to comedy, and male characters in both Aristophanes and Menander occasionally threaten to commit suicide because of poverty or love. Both Strepsiades in Aristophanes’ Clouds (776–82) and Philocleon in the Wasps (522–23) threaten to kill themselves when facing financial worries.11 In Menander’s Perikei-romene the soldier Polemon, feeling full of remorse, twice alludes to ending his life when his companion, Glycera, leaves him because he has brutalized her (504, 977).12 Another soldier, Tharsonides in Menander’s Misoumenos, apparently asks his slave for a sword, but the latter refuses to obey.13 The presence of such allusions in Greek comedy makes perfect sense in light of Aristotle’s disapproval of suicide because of poverty or love, and in light of his stipulation that comedy’s goal is to represent characters who are of lesser moral worth than an average person.14

Plautus and Terence would thus have found examples of lovers threatening to commit suicide in the works of Greek comic playwrights, who, in turn, would have been appropriating and transforming a motif used earlier by the tragedians.15 A comprehensive literary his-tory of the motif is, however, beyond the scope of the present essay. My focus is instead on the choices that Roman playwrights made in adapting the plays of New Comedy for the third- and second-century audiences of the Roman palliata, audiences who would also have been familiar with the representations of suicide in Roman tragedy. These choices, as I hope to demonstrate, reveal a set of coherent attitudes toward suicide, which can be regarded as comedy’s contri-bution to—and thus partial ref lection of—the contemporary Roman discourse of self-inf licted death.

10 Creon interprets his son’s infatuation as a weakness (746).11 On humor and suicide in Greek literature, see Van Hooff (above, n.3) 70–71;

see Van Hooff 147.12 On Glycera’s position and her motives, see D. Konstan (“Between Courtesan

and Wife: Menander’s Perikeiromene,” Phoenix 41.2 [1987] 131). Suicide seems to have played a central role in Menander’s Women Drinking Hemlock.

13 See fragment 4 in W. G. Arnott’s Menander Vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). In the same play, Getas cites Tharsonides as beseeching the girl not to abandon him and threatening that, if she leaves, she will soon hear that he is dead (706–711); see also Don. Ad Ad 275.2 and his reference to frustrated lovers in Greek comedy.

14 Humorous treatment of suicidal discourse can thus be easily accounted for in terms of Aristotle’s famous definition of the laughable as “a disgrace that is not painful or destructive” (1449a).

15 On masculinity and suicide in Greek novel, see K. Haynes (Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel [London 2003] 81, 91–92); on the meanings of suicide in this genre, see S. McAlister (Dreams and Suicides: The Greek Novel from Antiquity to Byzantine Empire [London 1996] 6–65), who sees tragedy as the novel’s model of this motif. On self-killing in Roman elegy, see T. Hill (Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and Self in Roman Thought and Literature [New York and London, 2004] 87–104).

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III. PlautusThe star-crossed lover contemplating suicide is a figure frequently

encountered on the Plautine stage. As will become apparent shortly, the scenario is usually enacted in three movements: a) the lover expresses his despair; b) the witness, i.e., the beloved herself, a friend, or a clever slave, responds; c) the lover forgets all about suicide.

Let us begin with the lover who comes the closest to taking his own life. Alcesimarchus in the Cistellaria is frustrated because his beloved Selenium refuses to believe that he is faithful to her; he leaves the stage in a fury, swearing that he will “butcher, kill, and trample to death” both the girl and her (adoptive) mother. Later in the play, however, when the two women happen to come near Al-cesimarchus’s house they overhear him addressing Death: AL. recipe me ad te, Mors, amicum et beniuolum. SEL. mater mea, / periimus miserae. AL. utrum hac me feriam an ab laeva latus? (“AL. O Death, receive me! I am your friend and supporter. SEL. Mother dear, we are wretched and lost. AL. Should I strike my side from this [right] side or from the left?” 639–41). The words of this amator are al-most certainly intended to evoke a tragic tone,16 but, as soon as the audience/readers realize that he is deliberating about his posture, the ambiance of tragedy vanishes. We can hardly go on worrying that a man who does not know where to stab himself will harm himself, nor can we share (in all earnestness) the anxieties of a comic actor staging suicide. Indeed, when Selenium calls for help, it turns out that no help is needed; Alcesimarchus’ desire to live is instantly restored by her words.

The despairing lover in Plautus’ Mercator also meets with a sympathetic response. Charinus has brought home from a business trip a girl with whom he has fallen in love; his father (who secretly intends to keep the girl for himself ) tells him that she must be sold. The young man enters the stage thinking that he will never see his beloved again, and strikes the pose of the suicidal lover:

Pentheum diripuisse aiiunt Bacchas: nugas maxumasfuisse credo, praeut quo pacto ego diuorsus distrahor.qur ego uiuo? qur non morior? quid mihist in uita boni?certumst, ibo ad medicum atque ibi me toxico morti dabo,quando id mi adimitur qua causa uitam cupio uiuere. (469–73)They say that the Bacchae tore Pentheus apart. I believe all this was a big joke, compared to how I am torn apart in diverse directions. Why am I alive? Why don’t I die? What good is there in life for me? I have decided to go to a doctor and give myself away to death by poison, since my reason for living my life is taken away from me.

16 A similar line spoken by Theseus, possibly echoing archaic tragedy, was later composed by Seneca for his Hippolytus: recipe me dirum chaos (1238); see F. J. Lelievre (“Basis of Ancient Parody,” Greece and Rome 1.2 [1954] 68).

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Charinus’ reference to the Theban myth would have had strong tragic connotations for the audience (perhaps even quite fresh ones, involving Pacuvius’ Pentheus).17 However, the grotesque simile com-paring the young man’s distress over a lost girl to Pentheus’ physical dismemberment neutralizes the tragic tension. Enter Charinus’ friend Eutychus. The amator quickly involves him in his suicidal scenario by asking for advice about the best mode of death (483). Eutychus responds with a curiously meta-theatrical offer to cheat his friend’s father, run to the harbor, and find money to buy the girl; in brief, to play the comic slave to Charinus’ helpless amator (483–487). Later in the play Eutychus proves a very poor servus callidus, but Charinus never again mentions suicide.

The real servus callidus tends to show indifference to the star-crossed lover’s suffering. The antics of the eponymous trickster in the Pseudolus are a good example. His master Calidorus, having learned that the treacherous pimp Ballio has sold his girlfriend to a soldier, asks to borrow a drachma from Pseudolus in order to buy a rope. When Pseudolus asks for what purpose the rope is needed, the youth declares:18 qui me faciam pensilem. /certum est mihi ante tenebras tenebras persequi “so I can hang myself. /I have decided to seek darkness before darkness,” 89-90). Pseudolus refuses, osten-sibly, out of concern for his finances rather than his master’s life: “And who will pay me back my drachma when you are dead?” (90-95). This joke is an effective remedy against suicide threats, just as sympathy was in Cistellaria and Mercator, and the theme of suicide is temporarily dropped.

The theme comes back later in the play, however, when the slave and his master confront the treacherous pimp, who has sold the girl to someone else, despite his promise to keep her for Calidorus. Enraged, the amator orders Pseudolus to bring him a sword: CALI. eho, Pseudole, / i gladium adfer. PS. quid opus gladio? CALI. qui hunc occidam—atque me. / PS. quin tu ted occidis potius? nam hunc fames iam occiderit (“CALI. Hey, Pseudolus, Go fetch the sword. PS. What do you need it for? CALI. To kill him—and myself. PS. Why don’t you simply kill yourself? Hunger will soon kill off this guy here,” 349–51). This scene is reminiscent of the one that, accord-ing to Arnott’s insightful reconstruction, is featured in Menander’s Misoumenos.19 Menander’s soldier asks for a sword and then grows angry when he does not receive one from Getas—who, one can

17 See Serv. In Aen. 4.469 quem visum bacchae discerpserunt (“when the Bac-chae had seen him, they tore him to pieces”) and the similarity between Plautus’ diripuisse and Servius’ discerpserunt could suggest that the original speech might have contained similar vocabulary. On Pacuvius’ Pentheus or Bacchae as possibly containing a manic vision scene, see A. J. Boyle (Roman Tragedy [London and New York, 2006] 94). On this play’s concern with identity, see G. Manuwald (Pacuvius Summus Tragicus Poeta [Munich 2003] 48–49).

18 On para-tragedy in the Pseudolus, see N. J. Slater (Plautus in Performance: The Theater of the Mind, 2nd ed. [London 2000] 110–16); see also A. Sharrock (“The Art of Deceit: Pseudolus and the Nature of Reading,” C.Q. 46.1 [1996] 154, 159–60).

19 See Arnott (above, n.13).

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conjecture, takes his master’s threat seriously. Pseudolus’ response to his master’s threat is quite different: he jokingly encourages the lover to go ahead and kill himself, but not bother to kill the pimp. Again, this callous answer is rather effective, as Calidorus instantly forgets about the sword and instead begins to insult his adversary.20

Thus, Pseudolus, reacting to suicidal threats with jokes, and Eu-tychus and Selenium, rushing to the would-be suicide’s help, obtain precisely the same result: the comic lover forgets all about suicide. In each scene, comedic conventions (breach of theatrical illusion in the Cistellaria, the running slave routine in the Mercator, and jokes in the Pseudolus) sabotage any sorrowing sentiments that audiences/readers might develop. Humor functions as an effective cure for para-suicidal sentiments.21 The two exchanges from the Pseudolus are particularly interesting in that they cast the lover and the slave as respective champions of the tragic and the comic attitudes to suicide.

This conflict between the para-tragic lover and comic slave is again enacted in the Asinaria. In this play, the pimp-mother forbids her daughter Philaenium to continue seeing her ruined lover, Argyrippus. The couple enters the stage together to engage in what Henderson has aptly termed “‘see you in hell’ melodramatics.”22 The woman, who ardently begs the man to stay, introduces the theme of death, declaring that her mother’s decision will bring about her own “bitter end” (acerbum funus, 595). The amator, for his part, announces that he will also “repudiate his life” (606–607), and, as the two tearfully embrace, he wishes that “they might be thus buried” (615).23 At this point, one of the slave duo who have been eavesdropping observes that a man in love is truly miserable. The second slave retorts that someone hanging is in a far worse posi-tion. His interlocutor, who has had first hand experience with danger (617: scio qui periclum feci), must agree. This sudden shift of attention from emotional torments to physical ones focuses our attention on the body and its demands, instantly transforming melodrama into comedy.24

In the Casina, Chalinus, a slave-in-love, whose name evokes that of the typical amator Charinus, is torn between these two competing discourses of suicide. At first he evokes the routine of suicidal lover, announcing that his rival will marry Casina only over his dead (more precisely, hanging) body (111–12).25 However, after his rival wins, Chalinus adopts the down-to-earth attitude of the comic slave and delivers this short monologue:

20 On this exchange of insults as ref lecting the Roman custom of f lagitatio, see E. Lefèvre (Plautus’ Pseudolus [Tübingen 1997] 53–54).

21 See Hill (above, n.15) 88–91, whose thesis is that the attention that suicidal lovers receive in Roman comedy ref lects the playwrights’ efforts to portray Roman society as caring.

22 J. Henderson, Asinaria: The One about the Asses (Madison, Wis., 2006) 159.23 See also As. 621–622. 24 On the comic force of unexpected shifts of tone from abstract to concrete, see M.

Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World,. tr. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington, Ind., 1993) 315–22.25 Lysidamus threatens to make a sword into a mattress and lie on it, not un-

like Ajax (Cas. 307).

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Si nunc me suspendam, meam operam luserimet praeter operam restim sumpti facerim.et meis inimicis uoluptatem creauerim.quid opus est qui sic mortuos? (424–427)If I hang myself now, I will have wasted all my effort. What is more, I will waste my money on the rope. And I will have procured pleasure for my adversaries. Why should I die like this?

With his entrepreneurial concern for work and expense, and his healthy agenda of upsetting his adversaries, Chalinus establishes his credentials as a comic slave, rejecting the sentiments he expressed earlier when playing a lover. What is more, in the slave’s vision of his own death, this persona emerges as his true self, and this self would refuse to die in order to please his enemies. Chalinus’ concern with the question of cui bono draws our attention to the contradiction inherent in the suicidal threats uttered by a typical lover (a Charinus). On the one hand, the lover is allegedly willing to die because he is denied the pleasure of being with his beloved; on the other hand, his death would necessarily preclude his future enjoyment of any pleasure. In other words, Chalinus, by pointing out that his death would only benefit his enemies, demonstrates that suicide for love is an entirely pointless gesture.

The scenes we have examined follow the same pattern: the script raises the tragic possibility of suicide, only to make light of it. The Plautine lover’s suicidal threats are inherently defective because the unique and irreversible act of death is essentially alien to the repeti-tive logic of the comic plots.26 Suicidal vignettes are thus profoundly funny because they threaten to sabotage the comic machinery, but they always fail, when, to paraphrase Bergson, mechanically happy endings are grafted upon decisions of life and death.27 But the para-suicidal vignettes in Roman comedy do not rely on generic interplay alone; their humor also depends on gendered perceptions of suicide, to which I will now turn.

IV. TerenceTerence, as observed above, generally avoided inserting threats

of suicide in the words of his amatores. In the Adelphoe for ex-ample, he preferred the amator to contemplate exile, although the lover in Menander’s original version threatened to take his life;28 in the Andria, it is a slave (rather than the young man himself ) who expresses anxiety for his master’s life (210). When Antipho in the

26 On the poetics of repetition in Roman comedy, see A. Sharrock, Reading Roman Comedy: Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence (Cambridge 2009) 163–67, 201–204.

27 Bergson, “Du méchanique plaqué sur du vivant” (above, n.1) 39. 28 So Donatus Ad Ad 275.2; see ibid. on frustrated lovers in Greek comedy

choosing exile. Charinus in the Andria makes a broad reference to disappearing (322), which could allude to suicide as well as to self-exile (see Clinia in Haut).

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Phormio confesses that his life depends on the fate of his beloved (Ph. 483), the audience soon learns that she is safe (504–505). One potential rationale for such cautious avoidance of empty threats might be inferred from a peculiar exchange in the Eunuchus. At the begin-ning of this play Phaedria, the love-struck adulescens, deliberates on how he should respond to Thais, who, having refused to receive him for a while, now invites him back to her house. He is tempted, but part of him wants to reject the invitation and would rather die than forgive his former girlfriend. His slave, Parmeno, suggests that the lover should abandon all efforts to act rationally. To demonstrate how pathetic the youth’s attempts at rationality are, the slave treats the audience to a parody of the amator’s incoherent speech. The parody allegedly echoes the words Phaedria uttered before entering the stage (quod tute cogitas) and contains a wish to die.29

et quod nunc tute tecum iratus cogitas ‘egon illam, quae illum, quae me, quae non . . . sine modo,mori me malim: sentiet qui vir siem’ haec uerba una mehercle falsa lacrimula,quam oculos terendo misere uix ui expresserit,restinguet. (64–69)And what you are now rehearsing with yourself in anger—“I will . . . her, because she . . . him, because she me, because . . . just wait and see. I prefer to die: she will perceive that I am a man”—these words she will extinguish with one false little tear, which she will squeeze out by force and with difficulty, by rubbing her eyes.

The sheer extravagance of Phaedria’s ambition to force Thais to appreciate his manliness at any cost, including his own death, evokes the paradox of self-sacrifice for the sake of self, ridiculed in Chalinus’ speech in the Casina. But Parmeno’s speech also brings into focus a consideration that we have so far left aside: that suicide might under some circumstances have been considered a respectable act and a proof of the victim’s worth as vir. As Parmeno retells it, Phaedria’s speech implied that death would bear witness to his status of vir, but the language the slave uses to ventriloquize the lover’s feelings, with its abuse of aposiopesis and ellipsis, is arguably meant to demonstrate the amator’s weakness and indecision, not the most desirable qualities in a Roman vir.30 Parmeno’s parody hinges on the contrast between the young man’s aspirations to be virile and rational and the programmatic infirmity of the comedic lover.

29 The opening words have parallels in epic and tragedy; see Sharrock (above, n.26) 228.

30 M. McDonnell (Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic [Cambridge 2006] 12–59) concludes that, up to the mid-second century b.c.e., Roman “manli-ness” was coextensive with courage.

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31 See se morti dare (“give oneself to death”) in Mer. 472. In her Annex, Grisé (above, n.3) 292–97 presents the Latin vocabulary of suicide lists: mortem (laetum, necem) sibi consciscere (adsciscere, irrogare, approbare) is the most frequent idiom, followed by mors voluntaria. Sui-cidium is a modern neologism based on parri-cidium; see Hill (above, n.15) 1–4 and his references.

32 The dating of most of these texts, from the first century b.c.e. and later, coincides with the popularity of Stoicism (see Van Hooff [above, n.3] 47 and Hill [above, n.15] 1–3). As M. Griffin argues (“Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: I,” Greece and Rome 33.1 [1986] 71–77; see also “Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: II,” Greece and Rome 33.2 [1986] 192–202) the Greek Stoics’ and other philosophical schools’ approval for suicide was guarded and cannot fully account for the Roman respect for suicide even in these later sources.

In meta-literary terms, the slave’s stance can be read as a cri-tique of the Plautine practice of dwelling on the empty threats of the para-suicidal lovers. Terence’s Parmeno seems to suggest that Phaedria should beware of announcing his suicidal intentions because he will not fulfil them—unlike the ideal vir, who presumably would keep his word. I now propose to explore this association of virility with the act of suicide, by looking first at empty threats of suicide in comedy and then at valid decisions made in tragedy.

V. Gender, Courage, and Voluntary DeathLatin uses a variety of expressions that stress the importance of

willpower in self-inf licted death, such as “choosing to die” or “vol-untary death.”31 Many texts convey profound respect for the courage necessary to carry out such decisions.32 It is therefore crucial that we distinguish between threats and acts. Comedy offers an insight into the gendered connotations of the former in that it represents women as succumbing to suicidal despair very easily. For example, Philaenium (608, 611) in the Asinaria sets the tone for the melodramatic scene of double para-suicide. Planesium, in the Curculio (173–174), also tells her boyfriend that she would prefer to die than to live without him (he does not reciprocate). The most spectacular incident is mentioned in Terence’s Andria (129–131), where we read that Glycerium came dangerously close to her sister’s funeral pyre. In these purely rhetori-cal references to death, the female lovers greatly resemble their male partners. Or, perhaps, we should say that in considering death when separated from their beloved, the male lovers resemble women, who routinely envision suicide when parted from loved ones.

The notion that suicidal thoughts are a woman’s natural re-sponse to private distress is especially prominent in the Rudens. Its heroines, Palaestra and Ampelisca, say several times that they want to die (175–217 and 220–227), but the motif comes truly into focus when, in a sudden change of fortune, the pimp Labrax appears to claim the heroines who had believed themselves to be free from him. When Palaestra declares (674–676) that she wants to die because an overwhelming force pushes her to do violence to herself, Ampelisca tells the audience that she has also decided to die. However, she continues, as soon as she thinks of dying, fear takes over her limbs;

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“after all,” she explains, “I have a woman’s spirit” (muliebri animo sum tamen, 685).33 Ampelisca’s confession, that animus muliebris prevents suicidal intentions from turning into deeds, implies that people and characters who threaten to commit suicide—but have no courage to follow through—act like women. This suggests that those who do take their own lives, at least sometimes, act like men (recall Phaedria’s fantasy of dying to impress Thais).

Consequently, comedic lovers—inasmuch as they abandon their plans very easily—give proof of animus muliebris. Thus, an amator’s indecisiveness would have come across as unmanly or, at least, un-heroic. The humor of the scenes in which comic lovers, both male and female, think of death seems to depend on the f lawed similarity of such scenes to heroic suicide. Some of the scenes analyzed above might have been derived from New Comedy. However, verbal echoes of Roman tragedies can be detected, as we have seen in the Mercator and Pentheus. More important, even without such direct parallels, the comic vignettes reproduce a type of scene that the Roman audiences would have primarily associated with tragedy.

The titles of both Latin adaptations of Greek tragedy and fabula praetexta indicate that the theme of chosen death must have been prominent on the early Roman stage.34 However, the only evidence as to how the decision-taking process was portrayed in tragedy is one dignified line spoken by the heroine of Ennius’ Iphigenia: Acher-notem obibo, ubi mortis thesauri obiacent (“I shall go to Acheron, where death’s treasures lie,”Ribbeck 202). As Cicero observes (Tusc. 1.48.116), the heroine seems to be in control of herself and her fate and “commands to be led to slaughter as a sacrificial victim” and thus secure a victory for her father’s army.

A rational and dignified choice of death seems to have been central to two of Accius’ praetextae written in mid-to-late second century b.c.e., the Brutus and the Decius.35 From the latter we have one tantalizing line of Lucretia’s account of her story: nocte intempesta nostram devenit domum (“On a stormy night [he] came to our house,”Ribbeck 5).36 The emphasis on bad weather, making it particularly difficult for Lucretia to refuse hospitality, and on her identity as a married woman (our house) most likely prepared the ground for her self-defence.37 Although we do not know precisely how

33 For a recent discussion of the representations of suicide in the Rudens, with special attention to gender, see Dutsch (above, n.3) 128–38.

34 Ennius and Livius Andronicus wrote tragedies about Ajax; Accius adapted for the Roman stage three tragedies featuring female suicide: Erigona, Alcestis, and Antigona. See O. Ribbeck, Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta, vol. 1 (Hildesheim 1962)

35 Cassius’ Brutus and Lucretia (written ca. 47–45 b.c.e.) explored the same theme as Accius’ Brutus.

36 Ribbeck (above, n.34) assigns this line to Accius’ Lucretia, although Varro Ling. 6.7. and 7.72 attributes it to Cassius.

37 The legend that Lucretia’s rape and death precipitated the fall of the Tar-quins, known to Fabius Pictor (D.H. 4.65–67), must have dated to the third century b.c.e. (at least).

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38 For Lucretia’s animus virilis, see Valerius Maximus (6.1.1). In Livy’s account Lucretia represents her suicide as a sacrif ice in the name of the chastity of future generations (see C. Edwards, Death in Ancient Rome [New Haven 2007] 182). Given Livy’s penchant for using dramatic models (see P. G. Walsh, “Making a Drama out of a Crisis: Livy in the Bacchanalia,” Greece & Rome 2.43, No. 2 [1996] 188–203) it is probable although unprovable that Livy was drawing upon an earlier dramatic version of the legend.

39 See M. Erasmo (Roman Tragedy: Theatre to Theatricality [Austin 2004] 68–72) for a persuasive attempt at the reconstruction of the play.

40 For res as synonymous with state, see Enn. Ann. L. 153; see O. Skutch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford 1985) 318.

41 Cicero, likewise, stresses that only a leader who cared for his country (patria) more than for his life (vita) would perform devotio (N. D. 3.15). For an account of Decius’ death (ca. 340 b.c.e.) see Livy (8.9.4).

42 On perception of collective sacrif ice in Greek tragedy, see P. Bonnechaire (“La notion d’‘acte collectif’ dans le sacrif ice humain grec,” Phoenix 52.3/4 [1998]

Accius’ Lucretia explained her decision, later writers presented her death as a protest against tyranny and an affirmation of the collective ideology of pudicitia, and praised her manly spirit (animus virilis).38

The question of collective values comes clearly into focus in Ac-cius’ Decius, which represents the death of the consul Decius Mus, who, following a legendary Roman custom, performed self-sacrifice on the battlefield (as a form of devotio) in 340 b.c.e. Two lines from a speech in which the consul rationalizes his decision give us an insight into Roman perception of this type of suicide:39 Quibus rem supremam et patriam nostram quondam adauctavit pater. / Pa-trio exemplo et me dicabo atque animam devoro hostibus (“Through which [actions] my father once strengthened the supreme command and augmented [the territory of] our fatherland; Following my father’s example, I also will sacrifice myself and surrender my life to the enemy,” fr. 10–11 Ribbeck).40 These lines, emphasizing fatherland, father, and the fatherly (with the etymological figure patriam, pater, and patrio) stress the importance of belonging to the larger patri-linear unit of clan and country. They intimate that this larger group will greatly benefit from the sacrifice of one life (anima).41 Accius’ Decius represents the kind of self-sacrifice involved in devotio that is rational because the self that is destroyed has a stake in a larger, collective identity, which will benefit from the protagonist’s death. Such a suicide, just like that of Livy’s Lucretia (1.58.10–12) would most likely have been considered an act of “manly spirit.”

It is remarkable that the question of cui bono, which Accius’s Decius considers, is identical to Chalinus’ question in Plautus’ Ca-sina. Their answers and conclusions are of course radically different. While the heroic general chooses death because he is persuaded that it would benefit his fatherland and his clan, the comic slave chooses life because he suspects that his death would benefit his enemies. Their assumptions, however, are similar. Both Decius’ and Chalinus’ paradigms for thinking about mors voluntaria show that the question of rationale was of crucial importance in the valuation of suicide, and that a distinction was made between suicides committed in order to benefit the community and those that offered no such benefits.42

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The former was a theme fit for tragedy, the latter, for comedy.43 In sum, our reading of republican drama has revealed two criteria

for evaluating discussions of suicide: a) the alleged motivation, and b) the likelihood that the decision will be carried out. While sac-rifice undertaken for the sake of a community and its values, such as that of Lucretia or Decius, appears have commanded respect as a “manly” gesture (the protagonist’s gender notwithstanding), dying for love does not seem to have had the same prestige (Cas. 424–427); furthermore, empty threats of death appear to have been construed as undignified (Eu. 64–69) and “woman-like” (Rud. 685).

VI. ConclusionHaving these considerations in mind, we are now in a better posi-

tion to respond to the histrionics of the suicidal amatores. Although the contrast between the finality of death and the comic characters’ resilience is the basic source of suicide humor, within this general context, it is possible to identify several undercurrents of specific literary discourses of suicide, which comedy exploits. One paradigm can be found in Greek tragedy and its Roman adaptations. According to this model, suicide is a solution sought by tragic heroines in the utmost distress. Male and female characters in comedy do not satisfy the tragic standards because they are—programmatically—too fearful to die. Another strain of suicide humor in the palliata comes to the foreground when we consider Chalinus’ comic monologue alongside the snippets of Accius’ Decius, which presented a noble and self less sacrifice, meant to inspire awe and gratitude. The reasoning of the typical lover who contemplates sacrificing his life for the sake of his own wellbeing contrasts with the logic of an altruistic sacrifice made for the sake of the imaginary collective “self ” of Rome.

These comic lovers thus defy the standards of both tragic hero-ism and the aristocratic aesthetics of self-inf licted death, promoted in the praetexta. Because of the humorous shortcomings of their stock-types and the mechanically happy endings of their plots, the comic scripts protect their characters from a tragic fate and their audiences/readers from the sentiments of pity and awe. Thanks to such redeeming failures, Roman comedy absorbs the heroic discourse of death and sacrifice, transforming suicide into a laughable matter.

University of California DOROTA DUTSCHClassical World 105.2 (2012) ddutsch@classics.ucsb.edu

196–200) on the collective sacrif ice (especially the voluntary ones of Iphigenia and Macaria).

43 These two paradigms correspond quite closely to two of the categories pro-posed by E. Durkheim (Le suicide [Paris 1960]): “altruistic” suicides undertaken by individuals who value collective ideals more than their own lives (233–47) and “egotistic” caused by private distress (222–32).

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