SUICIDE AS THEME AND EVENT IN SOPHOCLES AND EURIPIDES
SUICIDE AS THEME AND EVENT IN SOPHOCLES AND EURIPIDES

Summary/Abstract: Direct suicide by diverse means or its attempt, serious contemplation of direct self-killing or of “suicidal” action that will bring on one’s death promptly, one’s volunteering to die at someone else’s action to gain something or to benefit other occurs in scripted reports of off-stage events orthat person’s from-stage exit to immediate death, even exityess death on stage (Alcestis). of with a surprising frequency. Fourteen of Euripides’ sixteen surviving tragedies dramatize the theme of self-incurred death, and a fifteenth is borderline: Creusa in Ion dares her unrecognized son Ion, whose poisoning she just intended, to slay by grievous sacrilege his unrecognized mother—what will also perplex and provoke immortal rapist Apollo as she could never do directly. Each of Sophocles’ seven extant plays is pertinent. This essay looks closely at two famous Sophoclean self-killers (Ajax and Antigone) and at four in Euripides (Alcestis and Phaedra II, these the most complex in motivation, plus far less familiar Evadne (in Suppliants) and a revolutionized willing victim Iphigenia. In Part III regarding these six we examine how they are motivated by two sometimes complementary pairs of moral characteristics that other times conflict, where sometimes one is essentially no factor: φιλιτιμία and αἴδως, φιλία ands ἔρως. Finally we look at differences between suicidal behaviors overall in the two dramatists’ work. Altruism is important in Euripides, benefit to others bought at the price one’s own death. This does not appear at all in extant Sophocles. On the other hand, vindictiveness is common in the oeuvre of both, yet Euripides in a larger body of work only twice shows death trade for grave harm of a hated individual or group (Phaedra II partially, completely Oedipus’ sons). Revenge is more common in suicidal thinking in Sophocles and unapologetic. Sophocles also makes explicit (Antigone) or may suggest (Ais, Philoctetes) a suicide’s hope for a better personal after-existence. In Euripides all expect personal end-it-all eternal oblivion, afterlife only in others’ honorific and often individual grateful memory.

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