Donne suicide a Roma antica. Solo per amore?

Abstract

Reports of suicides committed by women in the last century BCE in ancient Rome are justified
in the sources by the pain for the death of husbands or sons, they are considered consistent with the traditional
model of a woman devoted to her husband. Studies of women’s history had already found that some of
these episodes were attributable not only to personal but also to political reasons. In this article, divided into
two sections, we examine the cases of the six known female suicides in the 1st BC and the suicide of Lucretia
as a justificatory model constructed ex post to realline these actions with the tradizional model.

Keywords: Suicides, women, politics, tradition, opposition.