Stoicism and Suicide: Political Resistance in the Cases of Cato and Seneca
Abstract
This paper questions that Stoicism provided a direct motivation for the most notable suicides in the Roman era and that it provided a collective, so called “Stoic revolt” against monarchical rule. The paper critically examines the cases of Cato the Younger and Seneca the Younger by first outlining the Stoic boundaries of a permissible suicide by means of rational self-control, the preservation of virtue, and the repudiation of actions that were motivated by passion. The paper closely examines their biographies and contemporary sources. It concludes that the violent and emotional self-termination by Cato cannot be reconciled with the Stoic doctrine on the question of emotional control and should instead be more plausibly interpreted as a political protest Caesar that was grounded in the republican tradition. Seneca’s peaceful death, by contrast, was slightly more consonant with the Stoic dogmas. However, it needs to be understood in the context of the long record of concessions at the court of Nero and the failure for Seneca to agree with the principles he lobbied as a self-claim Stoic. The term Stoic came to be invoked routinely after the event to describe the politically motivated suicides and that scholars should distinguish the doctrinal nature of the Stoicism from the political uses, to which it had been put during the constitutional crises at Rome. This paper argues that Cato and Seneca’s biographies did not match their Stoic identity.
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