Problemi bioetici nella cultura romana di età imperiale: Il conflitto tra ‘suicidio con finalità eutanasiche’ e ‘omicidio’ nella Declamatio Maior4 dello Pseudo-Quintiliano

Abstract

In this paper, I explore an exemplary representation of the dual configuration of suicide both as a form of euthanasia and a crime in the Roman rhetorical-judicial culture of the imperial age. My aim is to examine, from the perspective of the anthropology of law and medicine, the conceptual proximity between ‘suicide for the purpose of euthanasia’ and ‘homicide’, in order to assess the argumentative patterns according to which the underlying gesture of this form of suicide can be thought to have represented a problem of criminal law, not only in the declaimers’ imaginary, but also, and contrary to what is generally asserted, in coeval legal and jurisprudential thought.