Lists of unusual deaths | ||
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Antiquity | ||
Middle Ages | Renaissance | Early modern period |
19th century | 20th century | 21st century |
Animal deaths |
This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout ancient history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.
Name of person | Image | Date of death | Details |
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Sisera | 1200 or 1235 BC | 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] | |
Abimelech Ben Gideon | 1126 BC | 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 or mortally wounded him. [3] [4] | |
Draco of Athens | c. 620 BC | 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] | |
Duke Jing of Jin | 581 BC | 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] | |
Arrhichion of Phigalia | 564 BC | 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] | |
Sisamnes | 525 BC | The corrupt Persian judge was killed and flayed alive by Cambyses II for accepting a bribe. [11] [12] | |
Milo of Croton | 6th century BC | 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] | |
Zeuxis | 5th century BC | The Greek painter died of laughter while painting an elderly woman. [7] [16] : 105 | |
Anacreon | c. 485 BC | 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] | |
Heraclitus of Ephesus | c. 475 BC | 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] | |
Aeschylus | c. 455 BC | 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] | |
Empedocles of Akragas | c. 430 BC | According to Diogenes Laertius, the Pre-Socratic philosopher from Sicily, who, in one of his surviving poems, declared himself to have become a "divine being... no longer mortal", [24] tried to prove he was an immortal god by leaping into Mount Etna, an active volcano. [25] [26] The Roman poet Horace also alludes to this legend. [27] | |
Sogdianus | 423 BC | The ruler of the Achaemenid Empire was captured by his half-brother Ochus, who had him executed by being suffocated by ash. [6] [28] | |
Polydamas of Skotoussa | 5th century BC | 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] | |
Sophocles | c. 406 BC | 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 | 401 BC | 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] | |
Anaxarchus | 320 BC | According to Diogenes Laertius, Anaxarchus 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] | |
Antiphanes | c. 310 BC | According to the Suda , the renowned comic poet of the Middle Attic comedy died after being struck by a pear. [7] [33] | |
King Wu of Qin | 307 BC | 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] | |
Agathocles of Syracuse | 289 BC | The Greek tyrant of Syracuse was murdered with a poisoned toothpick. [7] [16] : 104 | |
Pyrrhus of Epirus | 272 BC | During the Battle of Argos, Pyrrhus was fighting a Macedonian soldier in the street when the elderly mother of the soldier dropped a roof tile onto Pyrrhus' head, breaking his spine and rendering him paralyzed. According to a soldier named Zopyrus, they then proceeded to decapitate the king. [34] [35] [36] | |
Zeno of Citium | c. 262 BC | 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] | |
Qin Shi Huang | August 210 BC | The first emperor of China, whose artifacts and treasures include the Terracotta Army, died after ingesting several pills of mercury, in the belief that it would grant him immortality. [23] [39] [40] | |
Chrysippus of Soli | c. 206 BC | One ancient account of the death of the third-century BC Greek Stoic 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] | |
Eleazar Avaran | c. 163 BC | The brother of Judas Maccabeus; according to 1 Maccabees 6:46, during the Battle of Beth Zechariah, Eleazar spied an armored war elephant which he believed to be carrying the Seleucid emperor Antiochus V Eupator. After thrusting his spear in battle into its belly, it collapsed and fell on top of Eleazar, killing him instantly. [22] [43] [ unreliable source? ] | |
Quintus Lutatius Catulus | 87 BC | 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] | |
Cleopatra, Iras, and Charmion | August 30 BC | 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] | |
Tiberius Claudius Drusus | c. 20 AD | According to Suetonius, the eldest son of the future Roman emperor Claudius 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] | |
Saint Peter | 64–68 AD | When Nero ordered his execution, the apostle of Jesus requested to be crucified upside down, as he considered himself unworthy to die in the same way Jesus had. [47] [48] [49] [ unreliable source? ] | |
Cassian of Imola | 13 August 363 | 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] | |
Valentinian I | 17 November 375 | The Roman emperor suffered a stroke which was provoked by yelling at foreign envoys in anger. [6] [52] | |
Attila | c. 453 | Attila the Hun reportedly died on his wedding night by choking on his own blood, which flowed into his mouth from a nosebleed. [14] [53] |
Democritus was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. Democritus wrote extensively on a wide variety of topics.
Pythagoras of Samos, often known mononymously as Pythagoras, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.
Thales of Miletus was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. Thales was one of the Seven Sages, founding figures of Ancient Greece.
Diogenes Laërtius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. His reputation is controversial among scholars because he often repeats information from his sources without critically evaluating it. He also frequently focuses on trivial or insignificant details of his subjects' lives while ignoring important details of their philosophical teachings and he sometimes fails to distinguish between earlier and later teachings of specific philosophical schools. However, unlike many other ancient secondary sources, Diogenes Laërtius generally reports philosophical teachings without attempting to reinterpret or expand on them, which means his accounts are often closer to the primary sources. Due to the loss of so many of the primary sources on which Diogenes relied, his work has become the foremost surviving source on the history of Greek philosophy.
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Diogenes of Apollonia was an ancient Greek philosopher, and was a native of the Milesian colony Apollonia in Thrace. He lived for some time in Athens. He believed air to be the one source of all being from which all other substances were derived, and, as a primal force, to be both divine and intelligent. He also wrote a description of the organization of blood vessels in the human body. His ideas were parodied by the dramatist Aristophanes, and may have influenced the Orphic philosophical commentary preserved in the Derveni papyrus. His philosophical work has not survived in a complete form, and his doctrines are known chiefly from lengthy quotations of his work by Simplicius, as well as a few summaries in the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Aetius.
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and critic of Homer from Ionia who travelled throughout the Greek-speaking world in early Classical Antiquity.
Diogenes, also known as Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Sinope, was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynicism. He was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.
Philolaus was a Greek Pythagorean and pre-Socratic philosopher. He was born in a Greek colony in Italy and migrated to Greece. Philolaus has been called one of three most prominent figures in the Pythagorean tradition and the most outstanding figure in the Pythagorean school. Pythagoras developed a school of philosophy that was dominated by both mathematics and mysticism. Most of what is known today about the Pythagorean astronomical system is derived from Philolaus's views. He may have been the first to write about Pythagorean doctrine. According to Böckh (1819), who cites Nicomachus, Philolaus was the successor of Pythagoras.
Archytas was an Ancient Greek mathematician, music theorist, statesman, and strategist from the ancient city of Taras (Tarentum) in Southern Italy. He was a scientist and philosopher affiliated with the Pythagorean school and famous for being the reputed founder of mathematical mechanics and a friend of Plato.
Hippasus of Metapontum was a Greek philosopher and early follower of Pythagoras. Little is known about his life or his beliefs, but he is sometimes credited with the discovery of the existence of irrational numbers. The discovery of irrational numbers is said to have been shocking to the Pythagoreans, and Hippasus is supposed to have drowned at sea, apparently as a punishment from the gods for divulging this and crediting it to himself instead of Pythagoras which was the norm in Pythagorean society. However, the few ancient sources who describe this story either do not mention Hippasus by name or alternatively tell that Hippasus drowned because he revealed how to construct a dodecahedron inside a sphere. The discovery of irrationality is not specifically ascribed to Hippasus by any ancient writer.
Timon of Phlius was an Ancient Greek philosopher from the Hellenistic period, who was the student of Pyrrho. Unlike Pyrrho, who wrote nothing, Timon wrote satirical philosophical poetry called Silloi (Σίλλοι) as well as a number of prose writings. These have been lost, but the fragments quoted in later authors allow a rough outline of his philosophy to be reconstructed.
Damo was a Pythagorean philosopher said by many to have been the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano.
Perictione was the mother of the Greek philosopher Plato.
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Lyco of Troas, son of Astyanax, was a Peripatetic philosopher and the disciple of Strato, whom he succeeded as the head of the Peripatetic school, c. 269 BC; he held that post for more than forty-four years. He is also said to have studied under Panthoides the dialectician.
Cynicism is a school of thought in ancient Greek philosophy, originating in the Classical period and extending into the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. According to Cynicism, people are reasoning animals, and the purpose of life and the way to gain happiness is to achieve virtue, in agreement with nature, following one's natural sense of reason by living simply and shamelessly free from social constraints. The Cynics rejected all conventional desires for wealth, power, glory, social recognition, conformity, and worldly possessions and even flouted such conventions openly and derisively in public.
Apollophanes of Antioch was a Stoic philosopher. During his life, he left the Seleucid empire for Athens. There he became a pupil and friend of Aristo of Chios. As a student of Aristo, he may have call himself an Aristonian. There is some assertion that he is the same as Apollophanes the physician who lived at the court of Antiochus.
Heraclides of Tarsus was a Stoic philosopher native to Tarsus, Mersin. He was a friend of Antipater of Tarsus, the sixth scholarch of the Stoa. As a pupil of Antipater, he studied with Archedemus of Tarsus and Aristocreon, the nephew of Chrysippus.
The Italian school of pre-Socratic philosophy refers to Ancient Greek philosophers in Italy or Magna Graecia in the 6th and 5th century BC. Contemporary scholarship disputes the Italian school as a historical school rather than simply a geographical one.
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.
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.
Fatal accidents did occur as in the case of Arrhichion, but they were very rare...
In one bizarre Olympic competition, a dead athlete named Arrhichion was actually declared the winner.
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.
But not to digress any further, let us mention those who have perished by unusual deaths.
Milo of Croton's death was bizarre, but fitting
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.
This unusual way of dying was perhaps thought up to reflect Heraclitus' peculiar personality.
Up to this point, then, I have analysed a series of suicides that could be considered to be special, in so far as they respond to very peculiar motives.
Nevertheless, great thinkers seem to have suffered inordinately from bizarre or ironic deaths.
...Pyrrhus was killed in a bizarre incident in the city of Argos...
Plutarch reports on the unusual, almost comic, death of Pyrrhus in 272 BCE...
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 an unique instance of its bringing down an enemy commander.
It is not clear whether Zeno died as a result of holding his breath, meaning he committed suicide, or whether he simply died when he ran out of breath... In any case, it is a rather ridiculous death...
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.
For other testimony to the bizarre practice of seeking death by snake-bite, see the sources cited in note 17 above.
The inverse crucifixion is an unusual feature, but the preceding speech by the apostle is typical.
According to this tradition Peter's death came by crucifixion, and in a rather bizarre manner: he had been crucified upside down, with his head to the ground.
[Cassian] was also examined concerning his faith, and as he would not abandon it, or sacrifice to the gods, the Judges sentenced him to a very unusual death...
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.