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Death in Ancient Rome
For the Romans, the manner of a person’s death was the most telling indication of their true character. Death revealed the true patriot, the genuine philosopher, even, perhaps, the great artist—and certainly the faithful Christian. Catharine Edwards draws on the many and richly varied accounts of death in the writings of Roman historians, poets, and philosophers, including Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil, Seneca, Petronius, Tacitus, Tertullian, and Augustine, to investigate the complex significance of dying in the Roman world.
Death in the Roman world was largely understood and often literally viewed as a spectacle. Those deaths that figured in recorded history were almost invariably violent—murders, executions, suicides—and yet the most admired figures met their ends with exemplary calm, their last words set down for posterity. From noble deaths in civil war, mortal combat between gladiators, political execution and suicide, to the deathly dinner of Domitian, the harrowing deaths of women such as the mythical Lucretia and Nero’s mother Agrippina, as well as instances of Christian martyrdom, Edwards engagingly explores the culture of death in Roman literature and history.
Death in the Roman world was largely understood and often literally viewed as a spectacle. Those deaths that figured in recorded history were almost invariably violent—murders, executions, suicides—and yet the most admired figures met their ends with exemplary calm, their last words set down for posterity. From noble deaths in civil war, mortal combat between gladiators, political execution and suicide, to the deathly dinner of Domitian, the harrowing deaths of women such as the mythical Lucretia and Nero’s mother Agrippina, as well as instances of Christian martyrdom, Edwards engagingly explores the culture of death in Roman literature and history.
292 pages, Hardcover
First published May 4, 2007
About the author
Catharine Edwards
10 books36 followersCatharine Edwards is professor of classics and ancient history at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome and Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City.
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September 27, 2018After This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate I needed something lighthearted and uplifting to read and fate guided my hand to Death in Ancient Rome.
Ancient Rome was a big, busy place, there was a lot of life and so too a lot of death. You might have guessed already that this book is not about most of those deaths but about only a few certain ones, mostly upper class and mostly men, and only those who were written about by either Christians or pagans.
Edwards' main points are that there are two important shifts, from Republic to empire and from pagan to Christian. Back in the good old days of the Republic to be a man and to have a proper manly life was about public speaking and ideally commanding armies to victory in battle. Apparently the ancient Romans, unlike (according to Thucydides) the ancient Athenians, didn't have much of a concept of dulce et decorum est pro Patria mori , however death was always important as a display of character. Consistency was what the Romans were looking for, that and sang froid coolness and courage in the face of inevitable death. The first key death here was the death by suicide (and I apologise but the rest of this review will contain a lot about suicide) of Cato the younger in the Civil war between Caesar and Pompey . Cato, lacking experience in committing suicide, managed to botch the job, so a surgeon patched him up, however Cato reopened his wound and died slowly and unpleasantly. This was very highly regarded by surviving Romans. Cato killed himself to avoid receiving a pardon from Julius Caesar, as implicitly this would be accepting Caesar's power of life and death over him, killing himself was a rejection of authority, an assertion of liberty and a final gesture of contempt.
The other key figure in Edwards' argument is Seneca, but before she gets there she skips through the issue of civil war and the importance of suicide in it, civil war as a form of suicide and suicide as the best response to civil war - as fighting requires you to kill your fellow citizens, even your own kin.
Seneca takes us places, firstly in addition to having been Nero's tutor he was also a playwright and he gives us a strong dose of death as theatre and he was a stoic philosopher and with that a strong assertion of death as a philosophical act, a demonstration of values. Death as theatre was an idea already current in Rome thanks to the practice of gladiatorial games which were both spectaculum and exemplum, they were spectacular, but they also represented an example, when one gladiator admitted defeat, there was then a pause while the sponsor of the games decided whether the defeated gladiator lived or died, the calm and composure shown by the defeated gladiator, particularly if the decision was made for death was considered praiseworthy, especially if that gladiator helped guide the other's sword smoothly into his own throat, this, Romans were urged in literature, was how to face your own end as a man. For Seneca and others like him, one did not face death in the arena but in the bed chamber in one's last moments, in the company of friends and family, perhaps as in his case as an act of suicide as instructed by his grateful pupil the Emperor Nero, or perhaps shockingly, a natural death - recall the emperor Vespasian on his death bed remarking that he seems to be becoming a god. Such coolness is all the more notable because Edwards isn't sure that the Romans had much serious faith in an after life. Your final moment was really final, that last word really was. And your death revealed your character - Nero makes a mess of his and spouts one final dying phrase after another, plainly completely unprepared for the ultimate examination. So much for his education.
If however ordered to commit suicide by the Emperor then your death could take on an extra theatrical dimension, your last words and your dignity could be read as a rebuke to the regime.
Tacitus and Pliny the Younger are important here, as such dignified and manly deaths require an ongoing audience as readers, we become witnesses not only to such noble deaths but to the values of men who actually prospered under the reign of the Emperor Domitian and felt Edwards' presumes a bit awkward about it, through writing she says they were saying that although they went along with the emperor in their hearts they opposed him. To posterity they entrust the memory of the victims of imperial persecution (particularly if they died well). I believe this is called virtue signalling today, significantly we are made complicit by their narratives we become the sober elder statesmen capable of appreciating noble bearing and fortitude, but also implicitly the difficulties and compromises of living through tyranny.
All this dovetails nicely into the Christians and even more so to the Christian martyrs, the key difference was that they believed in a literal resurrection (drawing in particular from the strain of Jewish belief as shown in the books of Maccabees) and so could laugh in the face of death, like the defeated Gladiator, their cool courage was an example(literally if condemned to die in the arena, like Seneca their manner of death set the seal on their beliefs and faith, their last words a chance to condemn false gods and all who served them. Death was for them too the ultimate proof of the consistency of their belief.
Women complicate the general picture, not for the Christians so much although Edwards detects a slight pornographic edge to the description of the torment applied to female bodies. For the Romans virtue was a masculine quality and a manly death and a display of courage in the face of the inevitable (it was not unusual to starve yourself to death in old age if suffering from an incurable illness) was something for men, depictions of Female bravery for Edwards introduce a topsy turvy element as if to say that under a tyrannical emperor you can see how crazy the times were, because a senator dies like a coward while a woman ex-slave displays under torture the qualities of a man.
Despite which I felt for me a powerful sit up and pay attention moment was that the boundaries of the Roman story were marked by women, perhaps inevitably given their intensely masculine culture: Dido, Lucretia, and Cleopatra.
Ancient Rome was a big, busy place, there was a lot of life and so too a lot of death. You might have guessed already that this book is not about most of those deaths but about only a few certain ones, mostly upper class and mostly men, and only those who were written about by either Christians or pagans.
Edwards' main points are that there are two important shifts, from Republic to empire and from pagan to Christian. Back in the good old days of the Republic to be a man and to have a proper manly life was about public speaking and ideally commanding armies to victory in battle. Apparently the ancient Romans, unlike (according to Thucydides) the ancient Athenians, didn't have much of a concept of dulce et decorum est pro Patria mori , however death was always important as a display of character. Consistency was what the Romans were looking for, that and sang froid coolness and courage in the face of inevitable death. The first key death here was the death by suicide (and I apologise but the rest of this review will contain a lot about suicide) of Cato the younger in the Civil war between Caesar and Pompey . Cato, lacking experience in committing suicide, managed to botch the job, so a surgeon patched him up, however Cato reopened his wound and died slowly and unpleasantly. This was very highly regarded by surviving Romans. Cato killed himself to avoid receiving a pardon from Julius Caesar, as implicitly this would be accepting Caesar's power of life and death over him, killing himself was a rejection of authority, an assertion of liberty and a final gesture of contempt.
The other key figure in Edwards' argument is Seneca, but before she gets there she skips through the issue of civil war and the importance of suicide in it, civil war as a form of suicide and suicide as the best response to civil war - as fighting requires you to kill your fellow citizens, even your own kin.
Seneca takes us places, firstly in addition to having been Nero's tutor he was also a playwright and he gives us a strong dose of death as theatre and he was a stoic philosopher and with that a strong assertion of death as a philosophical act, a demonstration of values. Death as theatre was an idea already current in Rome thanks to the practice of gladiatorial games which were both spectaculum and exemplum, they were spectacular, but they also represented an example, when one gladiator admitted defeat, there was then a pause while the sponsor of the games decided whether the defeated gladiator lived or died, the calm and composure shown by the defeated gladiator, particularly if the decision was made for death was considered praiseworthy, especially if that gladiator helped guide the other's sword smoothly into his own throat, this, Romans were urged in literature, was how to face your own end as a man. For Seneca and others like him, one did not face death in the arena but in the bed chamber in one's last moments, in the company of friends and family, perhaps as in his case as an act of suicide as instructed by his grateful pupil the Emperor Nero, or perhaps shockingly, a natural death - recall the emperor Vespasian on his death bed remarking that he seems to be becoming a god. Such coolness is all the more notable because Edwards isn't sure that the Romans had much serious faith in an after life. Your final moment was really final, that last word really was. And your death revealed your character - Nero makes a mess of his and spouts one final dying phrase after another, plainly completely unprepared for the ultimate examination. So much for his education.
If however ordered to commit suicide by the Emperor then your death could take on an extra theatrical dimension, your last words and your dignity could be read as a rebuke to the regime.
Tacitus and Pliny the Younger are important here, as such dignified and manly deaths require an ongoing audience as readers, we become witnesses not only to such noble deaths but to the values of men who actually prospered under the reign of the Emperor Domitian and felt Edwards' presumes a bit awkward about it, through writing she says they were saying that although they went along with the emperor in their hearts they opposed him. To posterity they entrust the memory of the victims of imperial persecution (particularly if they died well). I believe this is called virtue signalling today, significantly we are made complicit by their narratives we become the sober elder statesmen capable of appreciating noble bearing and fortitude, but also implicitly the difficulties and compromises of living through tyranny.
All this dovetails nicely into the Christians and even more so to the Christian martyrs, the key difference was that they believed in a literal resurrection (drawing in particular from the strain of Jewish belief as shown in the books of Maccabees) and so could laugh in the face of death, like the defeated Gladiator, their cool courage was an example(literally if condemned to die in the arena, like Seneca their manner of death set the seal on their beliefs and faith, their last words a chance to condemn false gods and all who served them. Death was for them too the ultimate proof of the consistency of their belief.
Women complicate the general picture, not for the Christians so much although Edwards detects a slight pornographic edge to the description of the torment applied to female bodies. For the Romans virtue was a masculine quality and a manly death and a display of courage in the face of the inevitable (it was not unusual to starve yourself to death in old age if suffering from an incurable illness) was something for men, depictions of Female bravery for Edwards introduce a topsy turvy element as if to say that under a tyrannical emperor you can see how crazy the times were, because a senator dies like a coward while a woman ex-slave displays under torture the qualities of a man.
Despite which I felt for me a powerful sit up and pay attention moment was that the boundaries of the Roman story were marked by women, perhaps inevitably given their intensely masculine culture: Dido, Lucretia, and Cleopatra.
September 13, 2014
Catharine Edwards has written a book that can be enjoyed and profited from at many levels. I read it end to end, but I will be encouraging my students studying the role of Gladiatorial combat in Rome to read that chapter, those studying Gender to look at discussions of how male and female deaths exhibiting virtus are differently gendered (especially discussion of a man's mind vir animus in a woman's body).
The book's focus on death does not in any way preclude reading it instead for martyrdom, maiestas and resistance (a particularly good chapter), or Gladiatorial symbolisms, but a full reading brings out some fascinating parallels between them.
As the blurb mentions, mortality is an inevitability we all face and in a society troubled by issues such as assisted dying or the ethics of violence some of what the ancient writers had to say may well resonate with the modern reader rather more than the hang-on-to-life-at-all-costs-no-matter-the-suffering ethics advocated by some of our (post?) Christian ethics. I wouldn't say that this is the book to answer such issues (hardly its point), but it makes some interesting suggestions for further reading in the voluminous writings of (not only, but especially) Seneca and Cicero, which I for one will follow up.
There are some odd quirks to the book: every Latin quote is provided in the original and in translation, whilst the Greek only in translation and I cannot think of a rationale for this (if the original is important, it is important), unless it be that Latin is more widely known, but the nature of Edwards likely audience makes this less than certain.
I feel I have profited from its insight into the political realm of senatorial resistance and enjoyed other aspects as well as being prompted to read further into some of the ancient Latin philosophy, and I would recommend this book.
The book's focus on death does not in any way preclude reading it instead for martyrdom, maiestas and resistance (a particularly good chapter), or Gladiatorial symbolisms, but a full reading brings out some fascinating parallels between them.
As the blurb mentions, mortality is an inevitability we all face and in a society troubled by issues such as assisted dying or the ethics of violence some of what the ancient writers had to say may well resonate with the modern reader rather more than the hang-on-to-life-at-all-costs-no-matter-the-suffering ethics advocated by some of our (post?) Christian ethics. I wouldn't say that this is the book to answer such issues (hardly its point), but it makes some interesting suggestions for further reading in the voluminous writings of (not only, but especially) Seneca and Cicero, which I for one will follow up.
There are some odd quirks to the book: every Latin quote is provided in the original and in translation, whilst the Greek only in translation and I cannot think of a rationale for this (if the original is important, it is important), unless it be that Latin is more widely known, but the nature of Edwards likely audience makes this less than certain.
I feel I have profited from its insight into the political realm of senatorial resistance and enjoyed other aspects as well as being prompted to read further into some of the ancient Latin philosophy, and I would recommend this book.
January 11, 2016
Edwards analysis of how the actual act of death was viewed by the ancient Romans (and to a lesser extent, the ancient Greeks) is quite interesting and clearly shows her extensive research. While I enjoyed reading her views on the subject, I could not agree with all of her conclusions. Even so, the book proposes an interesting view of the subject matter and I recommend it to all who are interested in ancient Rome, the sociology of death, and history in general. However, be aware that she tends to repeat herself, which adds a level of tedium to reading the book.
April 23, 2025
This text serves as a great overview of Roman attitudes towards death based on surviving literature, artifacts, and artwork.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews