Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1876-11-10
Remarkable Suicides.

Samson, who persisted amid the ruins
which crushed out the lives Of his perse-
cutors, is the first self-murderer of Holy
| Writ. Saul fell upon his sword in his lost
and last battle, and the horrid details of
his suicide live with every reader of the
Scriptures. Among the Greeks suicide
was common, though usually resorted to
for worthier purposes than lead to it to-
day. Lycurgus, the Trainer of the famous
Spartan laws, in order to secure their OBJ
servance, made his people promise to keep
them inviolate "till his return" and then
withdrew to Delphi, where, after a con-
sultation with the oracle, he starved him.
self to death, thus enforcing the perpetual
observance of the national promise.
| Suicide was so common in ancient Rome
as to be called ''the Roman DEATH" Pliny
and Cicero were the advocates of self-mur-
| der. Brutus, after the battle Of Philippi,
called On his favorite slave to kill him, and
| the favOrite serYitor, to avoid the act, slew
himself, leaving his master to plunge his
| own sword into his Yltals. Cassius was De-
headed at his own desire by his special
freedman, and Lucan, whose poetry lives
| today, opened the veins in his arms and
bled to death.
! But by far the most famous suicides of
ancient times were those of Anthony and
Cleopatra. After his fatal conflicts with
Caesar, the unfortunate lover of the Egyp-
tian queen called on his attendant, Eros,
to despatch him. The loving slave refused,
and at last, unable to withstand the en-,
treaties of his master, stabbed himself.
The despairing Roman, thus left to stab
himself, seized the blade, still reeking with
his servants blood, and plunged it into his
own bowels. He was found in this con-
dtion by Diomedes, the favorite eunuch of
the queen, and conveyed him to her pres
ence, where he died with his paling face
on her dusky bosom, and his ebbing life de-
filing her purple robe. A few days later,
and when her application to Caesar had
proved unavailing, Cleopatra sat down to
what was to be the last Of her many royal
teasts. The table was still aglow with the
regal banquet when the queen lay stiff and
dead. with the fatal serpent still coiled upon
her cold breast. A fit companion picture
to this royal felo de Sc is that of Sardana-
palus roasting amid his imperial halls and
among his concubines, on a funeral pyre of
sandal wood and precious gems.
In spite CT the prevalence Of suicides
among the ancients, the laws against them
ctripcnDt and tha M of
destruction was considered a heinous
crime.
It has been reserved for more modern
times, however, to afford the historian of
self-murder real subjects for his pen, and
the number On the list of suicides has been
steadily on the increase since the begin
ming OF the Christian era
1t is noteworthy fact that a proportion
of male to female suicides has been and is,
about three to one, and that while among
the females married women and widows
seek the last resort more frequently than
single ones, the score of unmarried male
| suicides predominates. Drowning is the
method most resorted to in modern times.
Firearms are next in favor, and poison
| falls last. The latter two are the most
common among women. But the most
singular Of all is the fact that, by accu-
rately compiled statistics, more cases of
fe1o de Sc occur in the month of April than
any other season.
| But besides these vulgar means, there is
no lack Of original methods of taking one s
life. Pietro Peratti, the NeapoIitan au-
| thor, who threw himself, in imitation of
the Sicilian poet, into the crater of Vesu-
1 Yius, and the Austrian captain who fasten-
ed himself to the signal rocket, offer, per-
haps, the most inventive specimen of
deadly novelty; but what can one say Of
Pierre Dumartin, who threw himself among
the bears in the bear-pit of the Jardin DIES
Plantes, OF Of the Greenwich pensioner,
Peter Deems, who, because his grog had
been stopped for some trifling misdemean-
OF, sharpened his spectacle legs to point
and stabbed himself with them.
| A woman in the service of the late Lord
Stanley broke a hole in the ice of q fish
pond of her masters garden and thrust her
head into the water, so that when found,
stone dead. her body was dry and a wo-
man whose husband was an apothecary ap-
piled more than a hundred leeches to her
person to drain her blood.
John Powar, an employee at the Iron
Works, in Richmond, Pa, before the
war, sprang into the furnace he was ac-
customed to feed, and a week later man
in the same works threw himself, face
down, into a channel of motion iron in
which gun was being run.
| A free negro employed at Little Rock,
N. c., in turpentine still, voluntarily
boiled himself down in the kettle, and 1t