in the eyes of the Trojan! May my death serve as an omen to his flight!"*

The death of Dido is full of passion, and hence she is so dramatic. But very soon, at Rome, suicide assumed a more philosophic and sententious tone. Instead of a scene of passion, it became a theme for philosophic discussion. In the Thebaid of Seneca, Edipus and Antigone enter into a debate on the subject of suicide. Edipus wishes to kill himself, not only because he is unfortunate, but because he has the right to do so. "I have," said he to Antigone, "the right over my own life and death. I have abdicated without pain the empire of Thebes, but I reserve the control over my life. Give me my sword, my daughter; I have resolved to die, and to conceal myself in the darkness of Hades, for although blind, the night where I am does not sufficiently conceal me; it is in Hades itself that I wish to be buried. No one has the right to prevent my death. Do you wish to refuse me my sword? to take away from me the herbs which administer death? Your efforts will be in vain, death is every where. God in his wisdom has so ordered it. Any body may deprive man of life, but no one can save him from death."

Antigone in her reply is no less sententious: "My father," says she, "it behooves a courageous man like you, not to give way to grief, and not to fly from the evils of life. Virtue does not fear to live; it resists misfortune and looks it in the face; and there is no more true contempt of death than not even to desire it. The man who has reached the lowest stage of misery is henceforth in safety; the gods themselves can add nothing to his misfortunes."

Such are Edipus and Antigone as Roman Stoicism has represented them. We are no more with Sophocles at Colonna, in the wood sacred to the Furies, mysterious and terrible divinities, whom Edipus invokes as the supreme arbiters of his fate, for he knows that his fate is in the hands of the gods, and that he cannot dispose of his life: May the day come," says he, "which destiny has fixed for the end

* Dulces exuvias, dum fata deus que sinebant!
Accipite hanc animam, me que his exsolvite curis.

Dixit, et os impressa toro: Moriemur inultæ !
Sed moriamur, ait: sic, sic, juvat ire sub umbras.
Hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto
Dardanus et nostræ secum ferat omnia mortis.

of my misfortunes! May Appollo and the daughters of night hasten the hour of my deliverance." Sophocles well knew that of all the personages of mythological antiquity, Edipus was the least intended to be a philosopher and a reasoner. Stamped from his birth with the seal of fatality, Edipus had long since renounced the hope of understanding the secret of his destiny; he regards himself as the victim or the instrument of the gods, and he would believe himself to be impious if he dared to take his life into his own hands.

In Greek tragedy, suicide is never treated as a question of philosophy or natural right: it is always the effect of a violent passion. Even the suicide of Ajax, which is the most premeditated in the Greek drama, has nothing sententious and declamatory. In a fit of madness, Ajax has destroyed a flock of sheep, supposing that he was attacking Ulysses and the Atrides his enemies. He soon after discovered his mistake, and, ashamed of his folly, he did not wish to be seen by the Greeks, and resolved to die. This resolution of the hero is calm and melancholy; but Sophocles has avoided with much care to fall into a philosophic gravity, which excludes dramatic emotion, as in the disorder of madness; for he has wished to represent an unfortunate man who has resolved to die, and not a philosopher who wishes to make a glorious death, or an ill man who kills himself in a fit of raging fever. Ajax, always mournful and sad, would not affect us: he regrets life, yet resolves to die. His soul is agitated by a thousand different passions, by his hatred of Ulysses and the sons of Atreus, by his love for his son Eurysaces, whom he recommends to his brother Teucer; and it is for these reasons that he moves us. We particularly admire the entreaties of Techmessa, the wife of Ajax, when we compare them with the sententious consolations of the Antigone of Seneca: “ Ajax," says Techmessa, "from the time that I became the partner of your bed, I have thought only of you. I conjure you in the name of Jupiter, the protector of domestic hearths, by this couch upon which we have reposed together, not to permit me to pass into other hands. Take pity on your son, who, if deprived of you and of the cares which infancy requires, will live under rude tutelage. What evils will not your death bring upon us! After you I will have no other assistance." A touching prayer, and full of the only consolation which could subdue the heart of

Ajax. Nothing consoles the unfortunate so much as to feel themselves useful to those who are more unhappy than themselves; and the sympathy which we have in the sorrows of another prevents us from despairing of our own.

Stoicism is not dramatic. Wishing to render the soul firm, it makes it immovable; and its heroes, who are not affected themselves, cannot affect the spectator. In the world, as in history, stoicism seen at a distance, produces effect. Man loves to witness this severe doctrine, which seems to place him above all painful sensations, and which strengthens at the same time that it elevates him; he is pleased in contemplating this thick buckler, which none of the darts of misfortune can penetrate. Timid and weak characters are especially fond of seeing those men who are inaccessible to fear and pain; each one imagines himself covered with this philosophic armor, and for a moment indulges the belief that it is easy to panoply himself in proof. Thus we see that stoicism was particularly successful in those times when civilization refined and rendered the character effeminate; since at that time society felt itself corrupted and enervated by a softness which it desired to shake off. Stoicism was pleasing as a contrast, as a consolation, as a hope; it was pleasing to a great number until it was put to the proof; a small number alone pushed it beyond that. But these few select ones found only fortitude enough to die well; they did not manifest the desire and the strength to alleviate the evils of humanity. Stoicism gives him resignation rather than devotedness; he is always ready to die, less with a view to assist or to save others, than to honor himself by the sacrifice of his life. Cato killed himself to avoid becoming a slave; Brutus, because he despaired of virtue: both of them sacrificed themselves for honor rather than for their liberty. This is the evil or the weakness of the Stoic philosophy. It elevates man, but it seems that in elevating above the world, it separates him from it, and renders him useless to his fellow-men. This heritage of barren heroism, this tradition of suicide from respect to one's self and his dignity, was perpetuated at Rome from the illustrious men of one generation to those of another. The Stoics of the Empire did not enter into many conspiracies; they did not endeavor to free the world of its tyrants; they were contented to take care of their honor by

observing silence in the Senate, when it basely condemned Agrippina who was assassinated by Nero, and by a tranquil suicide when the Emperor demanded their death.*

Useless and powerless in the world, stoicism is scarcely more effective on the stage. It endeavors to perfect us by taking away our sensibility to pleasure and pain; but these sympathies are the bonds which unite us to nature and humanity. By virtue of their insensibility to pleasure and pain, the Stoic becomes a fine brazen statue. How do you wish us to be interested in this cold and inanimate marble? We place our hand upon his bosom, we feel no pulsation; we take his hand, and feel no corresponding sympathy. Hence we see that, notwithstanding the beautiful verses of Addison, the death of Cato on the stage never affects any one.

Heretofore we have only examined the suicide which springs from passion or reflection, such as the history of the antique stage and philosophy have represented it. There is another kind of suicide, more esteemed in our days, which is caused rather by weakness and impatience of the soul, than by the violence of the passions or the vagary of systems. To see this kind of suicide, which seems the particular evil of our age, we might be tempted at times to believe that man has never before felt an attack of this malady. But it is not so. There has existed a literature which expressed the state of uneasiness and disquietude which we feel, and which has represented the world consuming itself in melancholy sadness in the midst of the most giddy pleasures, and finding in suicide an end, rather than a remedy for its evils. This literature is peculiar to the Fathers of the Church.

We will take, for the subject of our remarks upon this new species of suicide, a personage named Stagyra, who was possessed of a devil, whom we find in the Homilies of St. Chrysostom.

This malady was a kind of melancholy dejection of the soul, which the Greeks expressed by the word aovμia. Stagyra was one of those diseased and restless souls who imagine that they belong to the élite, because they have not the strength of vulgar souls; who have their joys and sorrows apart from the rest of the world, and who, as a last trait of weakness and impatience, despise and at the same time envy the calmness

*Tacitus, Anal. Book 14.

and simplicity of those who are called ordinary people. Stagyra, in order to rid his soul of its disquietudes, had entered into a monastery. But even there he did not find that peace and gayety of heart which he sought for every where; for man, in the first days of his solitude, finds only that which he brings. Stagyra was dissatisfied; and his complaint is curious, because it indicates at the same time one of the remedies of the evil which torments him, and shows that Stagyra, like many other ill people, could not support either the evil or the remedy. "What causes you pain, Stagyra," says St. Chrysostom, "is to see that many men who were tormented by the demon of melancholy, when they lived amidst the delights and pleasures of the world, find themselves entirely cured as soon as they have married, and have had children; while neither your fastings, your watchings, nor all the austerities of the monastery can alleviate your pain." This sentence is full of useful instruction. It was not from want of pleasures and delights that men became a prey to melancholy. This morbid disquietude entered, like the undying worm, into all the joys and pleasures of the Roman world. Nor had they any relief against the demon of Stagyra either in their beautiful slaves, or in their Ionian dances, or in their magnificent entertainments, or in their gladiatorial combats, or in the licentious stories of Milet, or in the voluptuous paintings of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Athumia poisoned all that, and the demon possessed all these debauchees in the very midst of their excesses. But if, wearied with these pleasures and these pains, they acquired regular and simple manners; if they married and had children, then, as if by enchantment, the demon would disappear. The sweetness of domestic life caused these disquietudes and miseries to leave them. They had no longer any low-spiritedness or bitterness of feeling. The souls of those who were possessed became reanimated, refreshed, and revived by the caresses of their children. There was no longer any demon, not even that of sadness, which dared to haunt the vicinity of little children. There was in the innocent and fresh breath of these little creatures something that was deadly to the evil spirit; and the cradle of an infant suckled by its mother was the surest talisman against thoughts which came from hell.

It is necessary, then, that the soul should have hope; that it should have a future, in order to escape from that dejection