Book 3, Letter 21, Part 2 of 3. To Cicero, on life under a tyrant

Caesar's account of the Civil War makes him out to be a great benefactor, bringing justice and peace to a society crippled by decades of conflict. He forgives his enemies, he is just in his rulings, returns exiled citizens and does it all with a glad smile on his face. However, Cicero, I found your letters to one Marcus Claudius Marcellus, and within that story lies a window to the truth of what Caesar was really like.

You wrote to Marcellus in September of 46BCE, concerning his reasons for self imposed exile, and of your common feelings about the war. (Letter CCCLXXXIV)

“...But I was conscious of this – that you were not satisfied with the policy of the civil war, not with Pompey's forces, nor the nature of his army, and were always deeply distrustful of it: in which sentiment I think you remember that I also shared. Accordingly, you did not take much part in active service, and I always strove not to do so. For we were not fighting with the weapons with which we might have prevailed – deliberation, weight of character, and the righteousness of our cause, in all of which we had the superiority – but with muscles and brute force, in which we were not his equals.

...However, even if you had already made up your mind, that you preferred being absent from Rome to seeing what was repugnant to your feelings, yet you ought to have reflected that, wherever you were, you would be in the power of the man from whom you were fleeing. And even if he were likely to make no difficulty about allowing you to live in peace while deprived of property and country, you ought yet to have reflected whether you preferred living at Rome and in your own house, whatever the state of affairs, to living at Mytilene or Rhodes. But seeing that the power of the man whom we fear is so widely extended, that it has embraced the whole world, do you not prefer to being in your own house without danger, to being in another man's with danger? For my part, if I must face death, I would rather do so at home and in my native country, than in a foreign and alien land.”

Then in your next letter to him, you continue to exhort him to consider returning to Rome, even though it would mean living under the rule of a tyrant.

CCCCLXXXV

“...But – you object – you will yourself be obliged to say something you do not feel, or to do something you do no approve. To begin with, to yield to circumstances, that is to submit to necessity, has ever been held the part of a wise man : in the next place, things are no – as matters now stand at least – quite so bad as that. You may not be able, perhaps, to say what you think : you may certainly hold your tongue. For authority of every kind has been committed to one man. He consults nobody but himself, not even his friends. There would not have been much difference if he whom we followed were master of the Republic...

...Everything in civil war is wretched; of which our ancestors never once had experience, while our generation has known it repeatedly : but nothing, after all, is more wretched than victory itself, which, even if it fall to the better men, yet renders them more savage and ruthless so that, even if they are not such by nature, they are compelled to become so by the necessity of the case. For a conqueror is forced, at the beck of those who won him his victory, to do many things even against his inclination...

...Finally, if it was the sign of high spirit not to be a supplicant to the victor, is it not perhaps a sign of pride to spurn his kindness? If it was the act of a wise man to absent himself from his country, is it not perhaps a proof of insensibility not to regret her?... The crowning argument is this : even if your present mode of life is more convenient, you must reflect whether it is not less safe. The sword owns no law : but in a foreign land there is even less scruple as to committing a crime...”

What a grim prophecy those last words of yours were to him, Cicero. For you succeeded in convincing the Senate, and Caesar to pardon Marcellus. The speech you gave on that day is a rather stark contrast with the image Caesar paints of himself as a leader of tolerance, clemency and wisdom. This speech, Pro Marcello, seems delivered in a state of terror, before a man still reeking of the spilt blood of his many enemies.

“This day, O conscript fathers, has brought with it an end to the long silence in which I have of late indulged; not out of any fear, but partly from sorrow, partly from modesty; and at the same time it has revived in me my ancient habit of saying what my wishes and opinions are. For I cannot by any means pass over in silence such great humanity, such unprecedented and unheard-of clemency, such moderation in the exercise of supreme and universal power, such incredible and almost godlike wisdom. For now that Marcus Marcellus, O conscript fathers, has been restored to you and the republic, I think that not only his voice and authority are preserved and restored to you and to the republic, but my own also.”

Julius Caesar

If there were any lingering doubt as to the power of a tyrant, it should fade now in the greasy light of this speech of yours Cicero. You debase yourself in giving thanks and divine praise to Caesar, you all but declare him to be a god more wonderful than Fortune herself for his act of forgiving Marcellus and allowing him to return to Rome, and to the Republic.

“But in this glory, O Caius Caesar, which you have just earned, you have no partner. The whole of this, however great it may be- and surely it is as great as possible- the whole of it, I say, is your own. The centurion can claim for himself no share of that praise, neither can the prefect, nor the battalion, nor the squadron. Nay, even that very mistress of all human affairs, Fortune herself, cannot thrust herself into any participation in that glory; she yields to you; she confesses that it is all your own, your peculiar private desert. For rashness is never united with wisdom, nor is chance ever admitted to regulate affairs conducted with prudence.”

I am ashamed for you Cicero.

*

Book 3, Letter 21, part 1 of 3, To Cicero, on life under a tyrant.

Dear Cicero,

DXXX

From M. Tullius Cicero To C. Cassius Longinus,

Jan 45BCE

“I think you must be a little ashamed at this being the third letter inflicted on you before I have a page or a syllable from you. But I will not press you : I shall expect, or rather exact, a longer letter. For my part, if I had a messenger always at hand, I should write even three an hour. For somehow it makes you seem almost present when I write anything to you...”

Cicero, you too are present when I write to you. I can see you sitting in your villa, or in the gardens of your Roman house reading and writing and enjoying, as I enjoy, the pursuit of literary pleasures. When I have a book of yours in my hand, though I sit in the field, or in a tavern, you are there speaking to me. We've been friends long enough now to know something of each other's virtues and vices, and I hope that we can speak plainly to one another. You have led me down a winding road, and here in the darkness of the Civil War, I have come to see and to understand something of the reality of your life. The strenuous terror of civilian existence while armies march and burn and fight. Your family on the run, your friends driven from Italy, your convictions tested, broken, and tested again.

I come now to those dark days of tyranny under the rule of Gaius Julius Caesar, those days in which you condescended to live, rather than to follow Cato's example. This is the time in which you are criticised for cowardice, but I think a more reasoned mind would allow a more generous understanding. All who live under the rule of a tyrant are ruled by fear, for there is no other option. Or as Sophocles puts it:

In every tyrant's court, he a meer slave becomes, who enters free.

(Quote found in : The Works of Plato, abridg'd. Trans. A.Dacier & Joseph Stennet. Jan 1701)

Is a man a coward simply because he refuses to die? You saw the greed and avarice of your old allies in the Pompeian camp and made the difficult decision to return to Rome, to either await the victory of Caesar, and thus the judgement of a tyrant, or the return of your old allies, and your probable execution for deserting their cause. You had said that it was better to die with the one than to succeed with the other, but in the end you chose a third option. You chose to live for the Republic, for the sake of your beloved Rome and for the sake of your beloved children. Yet in choosing to live, you suffered the pangs of your conscience.

CCCCLXXXI

To P. Nigidius Figulus

Sept 46BCE

“...For although no signal injury has been inflicted upon me personally apart from others, and although it has never occurred to my mind to wish for anything in such circumstances which Caesar has not spontaneously offered me, yet nevertheless I am being so work out with anxieties that I regard myself as doing wrong in the mere fact of remaining alive. For I have lost not only many intimate associates whom either death has snatched from me, or exile torn away, but also all the friends whose affection my former successful defence of the Republic, accomplished with your aid, had gained me. I am in the very midst of their shipwrecked fortunes and the confiscation of their property...”

Book 3, Letter 20. To Socrates, an apology.

Socrates

Plato

Dear Socrates,

Holy Shit! They really fucking did it, didn't they? They killed you for asking too many questions. Impiety! Ha! Corrupting the young! God dammit! I can't believe it, 280 to 220 votes. Those stupid sons of goats, couldn't they see?...Ah shit.

I just read your defence speech, given at your trial. It reads like a three part, bar room joke.

First you went to a politician, one who had the reputation for wisdom:

“When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him.

After this I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid upon me - the word of God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear! - for I must tell you the truth - the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better.”

Then you went to the poets:

“Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.”

Then:

“At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom.”

You must have been a difficult person to know, but I think that the hardest of all would have been for you to be yourself. You demanded the truth from those around you, and were fierce in your condemnation of the pretentious frauds you met, but how much harder must you have been on yourself? You held yourself to such an a high and exacting standard, but it was a level of virtue that you had learned to live with. So, at age seventy, when faced with execution at the hands of the assembly, you declared yourself to be equal to your own legend.

“Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men, - that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

I got a copy of your speech from a friend, a tiny and beautiful 1921 edition published in New York.

There is so much in your speech that I haven't brought up, though it is all worthy of reading and discussion. I read your speech this morning, ferociously absorbing the meaning of everything you said, (or at least, everything Plato recorded of the event in Apology...), my heart racing as if I were in the court room with you.

Goddamit! They really did it. They really killed you for asking too many questions.

Well, two and a half thousand years later, I think you're a real hero, Socrates. Above my desk your words now sit, An unexamined life is not worth living.

You're someone I can look up to, and someone I can look forward to meeting in that afterlife of which I know nothing, and of which you might now know something...

With Gratitude and Respect,

Morgan.

P.S. Oh, and your recent portrayal in the Assassins Creed game is excellent.  Long Live Socrates.

Book 3, Letter 19 To Henry David Thoreau, on the wilderness

Dear Mr Thoreau,

The Mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

If all I read of your work was this phrase in chapter one, I would think you to be the dark narrator of an industrial dystopian tale. Yet, this shadow between the pages of your book is only a momentary obfuscation of the glowing light of your soul. So much of your book reads like love poetry, and though you are criticised these days as a bit of a weekend warrior, a hobby farmer with money at home, lauding the virtues of poverty while you live a seasonal fantasy life as a rural pioneer, I find that your love of nature is both authentic, and praiseworthy.

Your writing is beautiful You saw things that were so magnificent they had to be written about. You experienced things in those woods that bear the weight of any of criticism, and for me still stand tall, monuments of poetry and of a rich and glorious delight in the English language.

It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted Huckleberries who never plucked them.

There is a truth beyond the beauty of poetry, and though you point to it, we cannot know it until we have tasted the wild fruit, plucked it with our hands, and felt the rain and sun on our faces. Until we have shivered in the cold and sweated in the hearth, worn ourselves weary with the day and rested our souls with the rejuvenating magic of a hearth-lit fire, we cannot claim to really understand the true flavour of life, of being alive.

I will quote back to you a few of my favourite passages...

This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame.

Let us settle ourselves , and work and wedge our prejudice, and tradition, and delusion and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say This is and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities if we are alive, let us go about our business.

How ordinarily tragic it is that you died of Tuberculosis, death rattling in your throat and uttering your strange, absurd and prophetic last words; Moose, Indian.

Henry, you have done so much more than inspire a century of readers to find beauty in nature, and to revel in the wonderful poetry of your experiences. You have inspired a century of writers to seek out that wildness you described, and to find it anew in themselves, in ourselves. I would like to share with you something of Mary Oliver's poetry. A friend and I made the music in this little video, and the poem belongs to Mary.

Youtube: Tony & Morgan (with poem by Mary Oliver)

Working on a farm, I have many opportunities each day to see the magnificence of creation played out in the ordinary scenes of nature. It is easy for me to take it for granted and to spend a day failing to notice the brilliant yellow lichen growing on the trees, or to hear the hunting cry of the kite who follows my shadow. But you, Mr Thoreau, remind me that no matter the ills that beset me in life, no matter the grave thoughts that anchor my mind, the beauty and peacefulness that surrounds me must be attended to, lest I should fall forever from the grace and wonderment that is to be found every day, in nature.  Lest I should fall into a life of quiet desperation...

I want to conclude my letter with is this quote from you:

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds.

Thank God indeed, and thank you Henry. Time has not yet cut down the forest hidden between the leaves of your book.

With gratitude and respect,

Morgan.

Book 3, Letter 18, part 3 of 3 To Tacitus, on Suicide

I don't want to make hard conclusions, however, I have two stories. The first is a rumour really, and it does not add to my happiness, but I will tell it anyway since it goes towards answering my question about modern popular suicide methods.. The local city train station currently has a high turnover of staff among their drivers. This is due, so the story goes, because one person a week is committing suicide by stepping onto the tracks in front of a moving train. This rumour comes via friends working in the mental health sector as therapists. These therapists are perhaps fighting on the front lines of our culture's darkest impulses, and have a unique, if somewhat bleak perspective.

The second story is more ambiguous, from the Japanese Zen tradition. A monk who, for decades had diligently performed all the rituals and meditations as instructed by his masters, finally became worn down by his inability to have a single moment of enlightenment. Considering himself a failure, he went to his master and announced his intention to commit suicide. The master did not try to dissuade him, but merely accompanied him to the high wall of the monastery, overlooking a a cliff. The student, knowing that now was the moment he must choose between enlightenment or death, put his foot upon the stone wall, ready to throw himself over.

In that moment, his mind cleared, and enlightenment burst from within him.

Enlightenment or death.

He made his choice.

*

So with the rumours, stories and philosophical discussions aside, I will share a few of the facts, derived from a variety of sources. I here quote directly from the web-pages I read, mostly government statistical studies.

In every state and territory of Australia, suicide is much more common among males than females, with the ratio standing at 3:1 in 2012.

According to hospital data, females are more likely to deliberately injure themselves than males. In the 2008–2009 financial year, 62% of those who were hospitalised due to self-harm were female.

Researchers have attributed the difference between attempted and completed suicides among the sexes to males using more lethal means to end their lives.

Suicide rates for both males and females have generally decreased since the mid-90s with the overall suicide rate decreasing by 23% between 1999 and 2009. Suicide rates for males peaked in 1997 at 23.6 per 100,000 but have steadily decreased since then and stood at 14.9 per 100,000 in 2009.

Female rates reached a high of 6.2 per 100 000 in 1997. Rates declined after that and was 4.5 per 100 000 in 2009. Comparing sex differences in suicide rates need to consider differences across the lifespan. Since 2003, for females, suicide rates range from 4 – 6 suicides per 100 000 with no apparent age association, whilst for men suicide rates range from 10 – 30 suicides per 100 000 with substantive differences across the lifespan; those males in middle and older age report substantially increased rates of suicide.

Methods of Suicide

In 2003 the most common method of suicide was hanging, which was used in almost half (45%) of all suicide deaths. The next most used methods were poisoning by 'other' (including motor vehicle exhaust) (19%), Other (15%), poisoning by drugs (13%), and methods using firearms (9%). This distribution was consistent with that of the previous few years. However, over the decade strong trends were apparent such as the increase in the use of hanging, and a decrease in methods using firearms. 

In 2016, suicide was the leading cause of death among all people 15-44 years of age

In 2016, suicide accounted for over one-third of deaths (35%) among people 15-24 years of age, and over a quarter of deaths (28%) among those 25-34 years of age.

According to the ABS, for those people 35-44 years of age, 16% of deaths were due to intentional self-harm.

Intentional self-harm top 10 multiple causes, proportion of total suicides , by age group, 2017

Cause of death and ICD code	5-24 years	25-44 years	45-64 years	65-84 years	85 years +	All ages
Mood disorders (F30-F39)	34.3	43.0	49.0	40.3	26.0	43.0
Mental and behavioural disorders due to psychoactive substance use (F10-F19)	25.9	41.6	26.7	10.1	2.6	29.5
Other symptoms and signs involving emotional state (R458) (c)	20.6	16.9	19.5	16.4	11.7	18.1
Anxiety and stress-related disorders (F40-49)	15.2	19.7	17.9	13.6	9.1	17.5
Findings of alcohol, drugs and other substances in blood (R78)	18.5	17.0	13.7	9.6	7.8	14.9
Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders (F20-F29)	3.5	7.9	5.2	2.3	—	5.5
Unspecified mental disorder (F99)	7.2	5.0	4.3	1.8	—	4.5
Malignant neoplasms (C00-C97, D45-D46, D47.1, D47.3-D47.5)	0.5	0.9	1.9	16.1	24.7	3.7
Diseases of the musculoskeletal system (M00-M99)	0.2	1.7	3.3	11.1	15.6	3.6
Personality disorders (F60-F69)	5.4	5.0	2.0	1.3	—	3.5
Chronic pain (R522)	0.5	1.3	3.7	5.3	5.2	2.6
Ischaemic heart diseases (I20-I25)	0.2	0.7	1.8	7.8	16.9	2.3
Chronic lower respiratory diseases (J40-J47)	0.2	0.5	2.0	6.0	9.1	1.9
Diabetes (E10-E14)	0.5	0.6	2.0	5.0	9.1	1.8
Heart failure (I50-I51)	0.2	0.2	1.0	5.0	7.8	1.2
Behavioural disorders usually occurring in childhood and adolescence (F90-F98)	3.7	1.1	0.6	—	—	1.1
Disorders of psychological development (F80-F89)	2.1	0.5	0.1	—	—	0.5

Indigenous Suicide Rates

Indigenous suicide rates are between two and four times those of non-Indigenous Australians in the 15 and 44 age groups

For those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent in NSW, QLD, SA, WA and NT there were 162 deaths due to suicide (119 male, 43 female), which was the fifth most common cause of death.

While suicide is a big problem across our entire society, for Australia’s Aboriginal peoples, it’s at epidemic proportions.

As the esteemed suicide prevention researcher Gerry Georgatos recently wrote in The Guardian Australia the figures below may not even represent the full extent of the issue.

“Suicide accounts for more than 5% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths… In fact in my estimations, because of under-reporting issues, suicide accounts for 10% of indigenous deaths.”

*

Discerning the reasons behind suicides is more difficult, but the sources suggest that long term unemployment among men, particularly in rural areas, is the greatest contributor. There is a feeling of chronic uselessness that, year after year builds up inside a man and dries up his sense of personal honour and respect. Of course, every suicide is unique, and individual personal reasons will involve many different factors.

So, Tacitus, while the high-profile suicides of ancient history make for fascinating reading, the modern daily facts make for grim study. We aren't killing ourselves because tyrants threaten us with torture and execution, but rather, every day existence and the struggle to make ends meet is torture enough.

I have said enough of the reasons for choosing to die, so I shall end my letter with a quote from Cicero, who, in his piece entitled Scipio's Dream, tells us that it is our duty to remain alive. In a conversation with the spirit of Scipio Africanus, the following advice is given to the younger, still living Scipio.

Unless that God whose temple is around you everywhere shall have liberated you from the chains of the body, you cannot come to us. Men are begotten subject to this law... Wherefore, my son, by you and by all just men that soul must be retained within its body's confines, nor can it be allowed to flit without command of him by whom it has been given to you. You may not escape the duty which God has entrusted to you.... It is your duty to your parents and to your relatives, but especially to you country. There lies the road to heaven.

So, right or wrong, suicide is happening every day. Whether we talk about it or not, it is happening. We are affected by it, our whole society is influenced by our attitudes towards suicide, and by the stories we tell ourselves about what it means. That is my purpose in writing this letter, to allow of an open discussion on a difficult topic. We Australians are killing ourselves in private, and in shame, loneliness and desperation, and keeping the truth of this epidemic hidden away, or only silently acknowledged, will not help anyone.

Thank you Tacitus, even when the lessons are hard, I am proud to know you, and grateful to have you as a teacher.

Morgan.

PS. As I finish writing this letter to you I have found more writing from both Cicero and Epictetus on the subject of suicide and suffering. I sense that I will write more on this subject in the future.  However, I will part with this quote from Albert Camus...

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.

Book 3, Letter 18, part 2 of 3 To Tacitus, on Suicide

             The suicide of Seneca - by Manuel Dominguez Sanchez

Here in Australia, there isn't actually a law prohibiting the reporting of suicides, but there is an accepted convention of censorship in the main news outlets. By scratching the surface and looking at the available statistics, it seems that suicide deaths account for three times the number of deaths by murder. According to rumour, the highest rates of suicide are among returned soldiers, dentists, vets and farmers, with men committing suicide 3 to 1, when compared with women.

In my culture there is no pride to be found in stories of suicide, only silence and shame. There is so much shame and repression of suicidal thinking and discussion, that even dying is shrouded in a mysterious fog, and requesting assistance in choosing to die, even when one is old and suffering from the agonies of illness, is a criminal act. Euthanasia, from the Greek Eu meaning 'well', and Thanatos, meaning 'death', thus means choosing to die a good death.

However, on Tuesday 10 December 2019 the Western Australian Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2019 cleared its final parliamentary hurdle making Western Australia the second state after Victoria to legalise voluntary assisted dying for the terminally ill. To me this seems like progress, however in the other states of Australia, here is how things generally stand.

What is legal in Australia now?

Both suicide and attempted suicide.
Refusing unwanted, painful and futile medical treatment leading to death from the illness.
Refusing food and drink leading to death from starvation and dehydration.
Being administered large doses of pain-relieving drugs, even though this may hasten death.  This is not against the law if the primary intention of the doctor is to relieve pain.
Being put into a permanent state of unconsciousness leading to death – this is often called ‘continuous palliative sedation’.

What is illegal in Australia now?

Voluntary assisted dying.
Voluntary euthanasia.

I have heard numerous stories of nurses choosing to follow their first vow, to do no harm, and who administer lethal doses of morphine to patients whose lives have passed the threshold of tolerable pain. I have heard it said that nurses do this more often than they could ever admit, that they place their gentle hands upon their patients, and with a kind whisper, help them onto a better kind of rest. A kind of rest that is better than a drug induced coma, better than a prolonged state of agonised zombification. It makes me proud to know that nurses are willing to do what is right, rather than to follow the letter of the law. I have heard stories of the the families, standing in the room and granting their whispered permission to ease the pain of their dying kin. It seems a blurry line between continuous palliative sedation and Voluntary assisted dying.

In reading your book Tacitus, and finding myself shocked at the culture of suicide you describe, I wonder what the popular methods of my own country are. How do people choose to end their own lives, here in the 21^st Century in Australia? So, to follow your method of writing, I will start with the rumours, and end with the facts, as much as can be gleaned from government statistics.

I have heard that single occupancy, single car crashes are often considered suicides by the police, even though they are reported as accidents. Charles Bukowski, the 20^th Century American poet once wrote that smoking and drinking are the only forms of honourable suicide left to modern man. With open reporting on the subject quietly suppressed in the media, it is hard to know what the truth is. I have three friends who ended their own lives. One chose to end her own life because the pain in her body became greater than her will to live. Another, it is uncertain, as they left no note, died of a Nitrous Oxide overdose. They were going through the long and difficult process of gender reassignment. The third took his life by the method described by Bukowski.

We humans are peculiar, born with the defect in our natures that grants us the will to self destruction that seems absent in other animals.

Is it a defect? Or is it a proud strength, that when faced with impossible options we humans may summon the courage to end our own suffering? Cato, the legendary stoic who committed suicide rather than live under the rule of Julius Caesar, is to history a hero for his act of self deliverance. Anthony Trollope, in his biography of Cicero, (published in 1880) puts it rather well.

...Cato must be allowed the praise of acting up to his own principles. He would die rather than behold the face of a tyrant... Men, indeed, have refused to see that he fled from a danger which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he lacked something of the courage of a man. Many other Romans of the time did the same thing, but to none has been given all the honour which has been allowed to Cato.

Alternatively, Plutarch describes the suicide of the Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, as one of happiness and noble self sacrifice in service to the commonwealth. Having set down his laws and ordered the society of Sparta in the way he saw best, Lycurgus travelled to the Oracle to ask if his laws were good. He ordered his people to not make any changes to his laws until he should return.

The oracle answered that the laws were excellent, and that the people, while it observed them, should live in the height of renown. Lycurgus took the oracle in writing, and sent it over to Sparta; and, having sacrificed the second time to Apollo, and taken leave of his friends and his son, he resolved that the Spartans should not be released from the oath they had taken, and that he would, of his own act, close his life where he was. He was now about that age in which life was still tolerable, and yet might be quitted without regret. Every thing, moreover, about him was in a sufficiently prosperous condition. He, therefore, made an end of himself by a total abstinence from food; thinking it a statesman’s duty to make his very death, if possible, an act of service to the state, and even in the end of his life to give some example of virtue and effect some useful purpose. He would, on the one hand, crown and consummate his own happiness by a death suitable to so honorable a life, and, on the other, would secure to his countrymen the enjoyment of the advantages he had spent his life in obtaining for them, since they had solemnly sworn the maintenance of his institutions until his return.

Is a chosen death, a happy death?

Book 3, Letter 18, part 1 of 3 To Tacitus, on Suicide

(Dear readers: this three part letter contains some vivid descriptions of suicides, as well as detailed modern statistics on Australian suicide rates. If this is not to your taste, you might prefer to come back to my blog in a month to read my letter to Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden. It is a much more beautiful letter, on walking in the wilderness.)

*

Dear Tacitus,

It's been a long time since I wrote to you. Your Annals are such a mammoth collection of stories and opinions and facts and myths and all the other ingredients that go into written history, that it has taken me the better part of a year to carefully sift through it all and, taking notes as I go, to begin preparations for a new letter to you.

I should open by saying that the modern opinion of your accuracy as a historian is rather critical; you are accused of unfair bias, and of straight up lies regarding Nero, and while I am not a historian, and thus not qualified to pass a judgement separate from that of the scholars, I am a storyteller, and it is in this regard that I assess, and enjoy your work. There is still a lot of verifiable truth in your writing, but I must confess that it is your personal reflections on the subject matter that I find myself most interested in, rather than the hard facts of history. I love the way you tell the story, the way you sequence events in order to illustrate the point you are trying to make about the terrible corruption, the loss of dignity of the senators and the steady decline in trust between everyone connected to Nero as accusations fly around and everyone commits suicide rather than face punishment from the Emperor, for crimes they did, or did not commit.

You, Tacitus, describe a high society culture of suicide that is as shocking to read now as it seems it was for you to have to write.

Bk XVI, section 16

Even had I been narrating campaigns abroad and lives laid down for the commonwealth, and narrating them with the same uniformity of incident, I should myself have lost appetite for the task, and I should expect the tedium of others, repelled by the tale of Roman deaths, honourable perhaps, but tragic and continuous. As it is, this slave-like patience and the profusion of blood wasted at home weary the mind and oppress it with melancholy. The one concession I would ask from those who shall study these records is that they would permit me not to hate the men who died with so little spirit. It was the anger of Heaven against the Roman realm — an anger which you cannot, as in the case of beaten armies or captured towns, mention once and for all and proceed upon your way. Let us make this concession to the memory of the nobly born: that, as in the last rites they are distinguished from the vulgar dead, so, when history records their end, each shall receive and keep his special mention.

Page after page you describe the many men and women, who, in order to avoid the tortures and execution squads sent by Nero, simply killed themselves, and sometimes their whole families.

Book XV Sect. 69 & 70

On that day he (Vestinius) had performed all his duties as consul, and was entertaining some guests, fearless of danger, or perhaps by way of hiding his fears, when the soldiers entered and announced to him the tribune's summons. He rose without a moment's delay, and every preparation was at once made. He shut himself into his chamber; a physician was at his side; his veins were opened; with life still strong in him, he was carried into a bath, and plunged into warm water, without uttering a word of pity for himself. Meanwhile the guards surrounded those who had sat at his table, and it was only at a late hour of the night that they were dismissed, when Nero, having pictured to himself and laughed over their terror at the expectation of a fatal end to their banquet, said that they had suffered enough punishment for the consul's entertainment.

Next he ordered the destruction of Marcus Annaeus Lucanus. As the blood flowed freely from him, and he felt a chill creeping through his feet and hands, and the life gradually ebbing from his extremities, though the heart was still warm and he retained his mental power, Lucanus recalled some poetry he had composed in which he had told the story of a wounded soldier dying a similar kind of death, and he recited the very lines. These were his last words. After him, Senecio, Quintianus, and Scaevinus perished, not in the manner expected from the past effeminacy of their life, and then the remaining conspirators, without deed or word deserving record.

Book XV Sect 62 & 63 Seneca's death.

A centurion came to Seneca's home to announce the death sentence pronounced upon him as punishment for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to murder Nero:

Seneca, quite unmoved, asked for tablets on which to inscribe his will, and, on the centurion's refusal, turned to his friends, protesting that as he was forbidden to requite them, he bequeathed to them the only, but still the noblest possession yet remaining to him, the pattern of his life, which, if they remembered, they would win a name for moral worth and steadfast friendship. At the same time he called them back from their tears to manly resolution, now with friendly talk, and now with the sterner language of rebuke. "Where," he asked again and again, "are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparation of so many years' study against evils to come? Who knew not Nero's cruelty? After a mother's and a brother's murder, nothing remains but to add the destruction of a guardian and a tutor."

Having spoken these and like words, meant, so to say, for all, he embraced his wife; then softening awhile from the stern resolution of the hour, he begged and implored her to spare herself the burden of perpetual sorrow, and, in the contemplation of a life virtuously spent, to endure a husband's loss with honourable consolations. She declared, in answer, that she too had decided to die, and claimed for herself the blow of the executioner. There upon Seneca, not to thwart her noble ambition, from an affection too which would not leave behind him for insult one whom he dearly loved, replied: "I have shown you ways of smoothing life; you prefer the glory of dying. I will not grudge you such a noble example. Let the fortitude of so courageous an end be alike in both of us, but let there be more in your decease to win fame." Then by one and the same stroke they sundered with a dagger the arteries of their arms. Seneca, as his aged frame, attenuated by frugal diet, allowed the blood to escape but slowly, severed also the veins of his legs and knees. Worn out by cruel anguish, afraid too that his sufferings might break his wife's spirit, and that, as he looked on her tortures, he might himself sink into irresolution, he persuaded her to retire into another chamber. Even at the last moment his eloquence failed him not; he summoned his secretaries, and dictated much to them which, as it has been published for all readers in his own words, I forbear to paraphrase.

Book XVI Sect. 17

Mela meanwhile, adopting the easiest mode of death then in fashion, opened his veins, after adding a codicil to his will bequeathing an immense amount to Tigellinus and his son-in-law, Cossutianus Capito, in order to save the remainder. In this codicil he is also said to have written, by way of remonstrance against the injustice of his death, that he died without any cause for punishment, while Rufius Crispinus and Anicius Cerialis still enjoyed life, though bitter foes to the prince.

So, with all these horror stories, which are terrible to relate, and with the strange sense of nobility and pride expressed in the act of suicide itself (as an alternative to being tortured and murdered), I turn my mind to my own society, and to the peculiar attitudes we have towards suicide and death.