How to kill a philosopher. The narrating of ancient greek philosophers' deaths in relation to their way of living

Abstract

There is a general interest in ancient biographies about death scenes, particularly about unusual, terrible, and strange deaths. Indeed, in the mind of ancient biographers the death scene is the last chance to confirm and glorify a character definitively, or to punish him for his way of life, and, if he is an intellectual, to reject the ideas expressed in his work. The topic of a philosopher's death might have been of great interest to antiquarians and biographers: indeed works about this topic were not rare, as the book presumably composed by Hermippus shows. 1 According to Riginos 1976, 194 this book was the origin of this traditional biographical rubric, which is almost always present in philosophers' biographies. Also Titinius Capito composed an Exitus illustrium uirorum, according to Pliny (Ep. viii 12). Furthermore, it seems evident that collections of examples of death were circulated and used by rhetoricians: Cicero