This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout ancient history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
The death of Aeschylus, killed by a tortoise dropped onto his head by an eagle, illustrated in the 15th-century Florentine Picture-Chronicle by Baccio Baldini[1]
According to Judges 4–5, the commander of the Canaanite army for King Jabin of Hazor, was killed in his sleep when the Kenite woman, Jael, stabbed him in the temple with a tent peg.[2][3]
According to Judges 9, the king of Shechem and son of Gideon, was killed in the city of Thebez by a woman who threw a millstone on his head which crushed his skull.[3][4]
The Athenian lawmaker was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre in Aegina, Greece.[5][6][7]
The Chinese ruler was warned by a shaman that he would not live to see the new wheat harvest, to which he responded by executing the shaman. However, when the duke was about to eat the wheat, he felt the need to visit the bathroom, where he fell through the hole and drowned.[6][8]
The Greek pankratiast caused his own death during the Olympic finals. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrhichion kicked his opponent, causing him so much pain from a foot/ankle injury that the opponent made the sign of defeat to the umpires, but at the same time Arrhichion suffered a fatally broken neck. Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrhichion was proclaimed the victor posthumously.[9][10]
The Olympic champion wrestler's hands reportedly became trapped when he tried to split a tree apart; he was then devoured by wolves (or, in later versions, lions).[13][14][15]
The poet, known for works in celebration of wine, choked to death on a grape stone according to Pliny the Elder.[13][14][16]:104 The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that "the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits".[17]
According to one account given by Diogenes Laertius, the Greek philosopher was said to have been devoured by dogs after smearing himself with cow manure in an attempt to cure his dropsy.[14][18]
According to Valerius Maximus, the eldest of the three great Athenian tragedians was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed that day "by the fall of a house".[13][16]:104[19][20][21][22][23]
The Thessalian pankratiast, and victor in the 93rd Olympiad (408 BC), was in a cave with friends when the roof began to crumble. Believing his immense strength could prevent the cave-in, he tried to support the roof with his shoulders as the rocks crashed down around him, but was crushed to death.[13][14]
A number of "remarkable" legends concerning the death of another of the three great Athenian tragedians are recorded in the late antique Life of Sophocles. According to one legend, he choked to death on an unripe grape.[21] Another says that he died of joy after hearing that his last play had been successful.[13][21] A third account reports that he died of suffocation, after reading aloud a lengthy monologue from the end of his play Antigone, without pausing to take a breath for punctuation.[21]
Mithridates
401BC
The Persian soldier who embarrassed his king, Artaxerxes II, by boasting of killing his rival, Cyrus the Younger (who was the brother of Artaxerxes II), was executed by scaphism. The king's physician, Ctesias, reported that Mithridates survived the insect torture for 17 days.[29][30]
According to Diogenes Laertius, the Greek philosopher gained the enmity of the tyrannical ruler of Cyprus, Nicocreon, for an inappropriate joke he made about tyrants at a banquet in 331 BC. When Anaxarchus visited Cyprus, Nicocreon ordered him to be pounded to death in a mortar. During the torture Anaxarchus said to Nicocreon, "Just pound the bag of Anaxarchus, you do not pound Anaxarchus." Nicocreon then threatened to cut his tongue out; Anaxarchus bit it off and spat it at the ruler's face.[31][32]
The king and member of the Qin dynasty reportedly challenged his friend Meng Yue to a lifting contest. When Wu tried to lift a giant bronze pot believed to have been cast for Yu the Great, it crushed his leg, inflicting fatal injuries. Meng Yue and his family were sentenced to death.[6][8]
During the Battle of Argos, the king of Epirus, Pyrrhus, was fighting a Macedonian soldier named Zopyrus in the street when the elderly mother of the soldier dropped a roof tile onto Pyrrhus' head, breaking his spine and rendering him paralyzed. He was then decapitated by Zopyrus.[34][35][36]
The Greek philosopher from Citium, Cyprus, tripped and fell as he was leaving the school, breaking his toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe, "I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?" He died on the spot through holding his breath.[37][38]
One ancient account of the death of the third-century BC GreekStoic philosopher tells that he died laughing at his own joke[41] after he saw a donkey eating his figs; he told a slave to give the donkey neat wine to drink with which to wash them down, and then, "...having laughed too much, he died" (Diogenes Laërtius 7.185).[22][23][42][note 1]
After his former comrade-in-arms Gaius Marius took control of Rome and had him prosecuted for a capital offence, the Roman Republic consul shut himself inside his house, which was heated to a high temperature and daubed with lime, thus suffocating himself.[13][44]
Although there exist several accounts of how the 39-year-old last queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom died, the most widespread one is that she killed herself with an asp (a viper), alongside two of her handmaidens.[6][45]
According to Suetonius, the eldest son of the future Roman emperorClaudius died while playing with a pear. Having tossed the pear high in the air, he caught it in his mouth when it came back, but he choked on it, dying of asphyxia.[14][46]
The pious schoolteacher was sentenced to death by Julian the Apostate and was handed over to his pupils to carry out the deed, which they did by binding him to a stake and stabbing him with their pens.[50][51]
↑ Halpern, Baruch (October 1983). "The Resourceful Israelite Historian: The Song of Deborah and Israelite Historiography". Harvard Theological Review. 76 (4): 379–401. doi:10.1017/S0017816000014115. JSTOR1509543. The bizarre killing in 4:21 is actually (perhaps only) explicable on the supposition that the historian misunderstood 5:26 to refer to two different hands and two different instruments.
↑ Irwin, Brian P. (2012). "Not Just Any King: Abimelech, the Northern Monarchy, and the Final Form of Judges". Journal of Biblical Literature. 131 (3): 443–454. doi:10.2307/23488248. hdl:1807/77554. JSTOR23488248. An additional connection between the Abimelech narrative and the early northern monarchy may be present also in the story of Abimelech's unusual and violent death in Thebez.
↑ Matlock, Brett; Matlock, Jesse (2011). The Salt Lake Loonie. Illustrated by Dwight Allott. University of Regina Press. p.81. ISBN978-0-88977-239-7. In one bizarre Olympic competition, a dead athlete named Arrhichion was actually declared the winner.
↑ Maximus, Valerius (1678) [c.30 AD]. "Book VI, Chapter III; Of Severity". Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri IX. Translated by Speed, Samuel. London. Retrieved 26 September 2024– via Attalus.org. But the severity of Cambyses was more extraordinary, who caused the skin of a certain corrupt judge to be flayed from his body, and nailed upon the seat, where he commanded the man's son to take his place. However by this savage and unusual punishment of a judge, he – a king and a barbarian – ensured that no judge in future could be corrupted.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Maximus, Valerius (1678) [c.30 AD]. "Book IX, Chapter XII; Of Unusual Deaths". Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium Libri IX. Translated by Speed, Samuel. London. Retrieved 5 September 2024– via Attalus.org. But not to digress any further, let us mention those who have perished by unusual deaths.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths §7". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries – Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol.1 (A newed.). London. pp.110–117. ASINB001F3H1XA. LCCN07003035. OCLC847968918. OL7188480M. Retrieved 23 July 2024– via Internet Archive.
1 2 3 4 Marvin, Frederic Rowland (1900). The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women. Troy, New York: C. A. Brewster & Co. Retrieved 20 November 2024– via Google Books. To some of the most distinguished of our race death has come in the strangest possible way, and so grotesquely as to subtract greatly from the dignity of the sorrow it must certainly have occasioned.
↑ La tortue d'Eschyle et autres morts stupides de l'Histoire[Aeschylus' tortoise and other stupid deaths in history] (in French). Editions Les Arènes. 2012. ISBN978-2352042211.
↑ Baldi, Dino (2010). Morti favolose degli antichi[Fabulous deaths of the ancients] (in Italian). Macerata: Quodlibet. p.50. ISBN978-8874623372.
↑ Cartwright, Mark (15 March 2016). "Pyrrhus". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18 October 2024. ...Pyrrhus was killed in a bizarre incident in the city of Argos...
↑ Levene, D.S., ed. (2024). Livy: the Fragments and Periochae. Vol.II. Oxford University Press. p.300. ISBN978-0-19-287123-7. Retrieved 27 September 2024– via Google Books. It is not implausible in itself—when an enemy army was inside a city or close to the walls, it was not uncommon for women to participate in the city's defense by hurling down roof tiles or other missiles—but this is a unique instance of its bringing down an enemy commander.
↑ Laertius, Diogenes (1965). Lives, Teachings and Sayings of the Eminent Philosophers. Translated by Hicks, R.D. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: Harvard University Press/W. Heinemann Ltd.
↑ Diodorus Siculus. "Book 37". Bibliotheca historica. Retrieved 5 September 2024– via Attalus.org. He killed himself in a strange and unusual way; for he shut himself up in a newly plastered house, and caused a fire to be kindled, by the smoke of which, and the moist vapours from the lime, he was there stifled to death.
↑ Tronson, Adrian (1998). "Vergil, the Augustans, and the Invention of Cleopatra's Suicide—One Asp or Two?". Vergilius. 44: 31–50. JSTOR41587181. For other testimony to the bizarre practice of seeking death by snake-bite, see the sources cited in note 17 above.
↑ Elliott, J.K., ed. (1996). The Apocryphal Jesus: Legends of the Early Church. New York: Oxford University Press. p.118. ISBN978-0-19-826384-5. Retrieved 27 September 2024– via Internet Archive. The inverse crucifixion is an unusual feature, but the preceding speech by the apostle is typical.
↑ Tompkins, Ian (3 July 1994). "Review of: Roberts, Prudentius' Peristephanon". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Retrieved 28 September 2024. The most common methods of execution in the Peristephanon are with the sword or by burning, although a number, such as Quirinus who is drowned and Cassian who is stabbed by his pupils' pens, undergo more unusual fates.
↑ Lenski, Noel (2014). Failure of Empire. University of California Press. p.142.
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