An interesting question that my group posed in our discussion on Wednesday pertained to suicide. It was about whether or not there was as much of a negative attitude towards suicide in the ancient Greek culture as there is today in our predominantly Christian culture in America. Suicide (rather, attempting to commit it) is illegal in the United States as well as many other countries. If someone attempts to commit suicide and are unsuccessful, they are taken to the hospital to be analyzed and could be put into prison if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others. In the Christian religion, suicide is also considered a sin. It is believed that the soul will not be allowed to enter heaven if the person has committed suicide.
Since we were never able to answer or discuss the question in class, I decided to do a little bit of research and what I found didn’t really surprise me: suicide was not incredibly frowned upon in ancient Greek culture. They had sort of a relaxed mindset on the idea of it and it was really only after the advent of Christians that it became immoral. Of course, the suicide is very devastating to those people who were close to the deceased, but overall it was not considered inherently bad. There were some however, as with any controversial issue, who did consider suicide as detrimental to society. In his study, entitled Miasma, Robert Parker asserts that suicide can be a sort of pollution to society. He goes on to say that there were, in some cases, punitive actions done to the corpses of those who committed suicide. This is very different from the case of Oedipus when he discovered the body of his wife and mother Jocasta after she had committed suicide. He embraced her and cried over her body before finally leaving to stab his eyes out. Clearly, there are some conflicting opinions on how suicide was considered in ancient Greece. However, I would say that the consensus is that it was not necessarily frowned upon until Christianity became more prevalent.
Since we were never able to answer or discuss the question in class, I decided to do a little bit of research and what I found didn’t really surprise me: suicide was not incredibly frowned upon in ancient Greek culture. They had sort of a relaxed mindset on the idea of it and it was really only after the advent of Christians that it became immoral. Of course, the suicide is very devastating to those people who were close to the deceased, but overall it was not considered inherently bad. There were some however, as with any controversial issue, who did consider suicide as detrimental to society. In his study, entitled Miasma, Robert Parker asserts that suicide can be a sort of pollution to society. He goes on to say that there were, in some cases, punitive actions done to the corpses of those who committed suicide. This is very different from the case of Oedipus when he discovered the body of his wife and mother Jocasta after she had committed suicide. He embraced her and cried over her body before finally leaving to stab his eyes out. Clearly, there are some conflicting opinions on how suicide was considered in ancient Greece. However, I would say that the consensus is that it was not necessarily frowned upon until Christianity became more prevalent.