In the journal article’s introduction, P. Preti and A. Miotto begin by discussing the prevalence of suicide in today’s world. According to them, there is a higher chance of suicide in the world because of improved living conditions, which lower the chance of demise by biological disease, but in turn allow a person more time to develop mental illnesses during his or her lifetime. Some of these mental illness could eventually lead to suicide. Suicide is usually an unanticipated event, but there are ways to help avert it, such as treating depression (if they have it), suicidal help lines, and education about identifying the risk factors and unhealthy behaviors associated with it. Much like the ancient Greeks, people nowadays commit suicide for …show more content…
Most ancient Greek books, including The Book of Fables, account more female than male suicides. But the statistics from multiple Roman authors, including van Hoof, Grise and others, prove there were more male than female suicides in ancient Greece, thus revealing some of the sexism of the Greeks. The Greeks did not want men to be viewed as pathetic as women for resorting to suicide. In the eyes of the Greeks, when the men committed suicide, it was usually by sword or dagger and for some kind of valor loss, shame, guilt, failure, or some form of incest whereas when women committed suicide, it was for some form of grief in losing a family member, trying to be reunited with a dead male that she depended on to live, or embarrassment. Also, attributed to female suicide is insignificant events, such as a woman losing her horse and killing herself for it. Because of this, women would more often kill themselves because they are more fragile than men, which reveals the sexist attitudes of the Greeks. According to Preti and Miotto, the main ways for an ancient Greek to kill themselves was through drowning, hanging, burning, or jumping off a high place. In the Book of Fables, there’s no mention of suicide by sword, but in van Hoof’s suicide list, suicide by sword is one of the most used. Hyginus focuses more on daily life reasons and suggests women preferred …show more content…
It covers both my broad and narrow topic more in depth than an encyclopedia source. It provides more information on suicide in ancient Greece, such as the reasons, perceptions and mythology of it. It also briefly covers my narrow topic, sexism in ancient Greek suicide. It discusses the different perceptions and reasons for both woman’s (weak) and man’s (brave, out of valor) suicide, and it is clear to see how sexism played a role in ancient Greece. From here, I can further research the views of suicide among the genders (its perceptions, reasons, godly perceptions etc.) and starting thinking about my research questions. I will use this source in my paper as a stepping stone for my