Note 8 — Chapter I · SUICIDES OF THE ANCIENTS.—ANCIENT LAWS AND OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF SUICIDE.
Reading edition
This is the only case of suicide recorded in the New Testament. Judas’s conduct is condemned in the strongest language; he is called in the Gospel of St. John (vi. 70,) “a devil, and the son of perdition;” and in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, at the 25th verse, after the account given of his violent death, he is said to have gone to his own peculiar place. (Εἰς τὸν τόπον τὸν ἴδιον)
Virgil thus alludes to the “place of punishment” allotted to those who sacrifice wantonly their own lives:—
“Proxima deinde tenent mæsti loca, qui sibi letum Insontes peperêre manu, lucemque perosi Projecêre animas. Quàm vellent æthere in alto Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores! Fas obstat. Tristique palus inamabilis undâ Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coërcet.”
(Æneis, lib. vi. ver. 434 et seq.)
“The next in place and punishment are they Who prodigally throw their souls away: Fools, who, repining at their wretched state, And loathing anxious life, suborn their fate: With late repentance now they would retrieve The bodies they forsook, and wish to live; Their pains and poverty desire to bear, To view the light of heaven and breathe the vital air. But fate forbids, the Stygian floods oppose, And with nine circling streams the captive souls inclose.”
(Dryden.)