“Paete, non dolet”: The Extraordinary Story of Arria and Paetus

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(Benjamin West, Paetus e Arria, 1766. Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art.)

I wrote about the episode depicted in Benjamin West’s painting in my book História do Suicídio. After tracing a long course through several ancient traditions, I chose to close the first volume with the story of Arria and Paetus as handed down to us by Pliny the Younger, our earliest source. The scene concludes an extended reflection on how, at a certain point in Western history, voluntary death ceased to be viewed as a gesture of honor or freedom and came to be condemned as a form of homicide. Below are the final pages of Book 1 of História do Suicídio:

“In a letter to his friend Nepos, Pliny the Younger immortalized the story he had heard from Fannia, the daughter of the statesman Thrasea, a Stoic hero who opposed Nero. Fannia lived for many years and died in 103, when Trajan was emperor. The story she left Pliny concerned her grandmother Arria, whose husband, Aulus Caecina Paetus, had been accused of joining a rebellion against Emperor Claudius led by Lucius Scriboniau. With a charge of treason in hand, Claudius ordered Caecina Paetus to open his own veins and kill himself. But the story has important and dramatic nuances. Pliny tells us that Paetus was recovering from an illness that had nearly killed him and had also struck his son, who did not survive. Arria concealed the boy’s death from her husband, who, despite surviving the illness, had been condemned by the emperor to open his veins with a dagger. When Paetus entered his son’s room, she took care to keep him from approaching the empty bed. She had made all the funeral preparations in silence, taking great care. ‘He rested well and ate his meal with a good appetite,’ she would say, according to Pliny. (1) Paetus, still recovering from his illness, would leave the room believing his son was alive. When Arria could no longer bear the pain of this loss, made worse by the sight of her husband about to carry out the emperor’s order, she would slip away to a corner and fall to the floor in tears, letting her grief come over her.

When Lucius Scriboniau was killed after the conspiracy against Claudius, Paetus was taken aboard a ship to carry out the order to kill himself. Arria begged the captain to let her stay at her husband’s side, but he refused. When she visited Scriboniau’s widow, Arria made clear her intention to die beside her husband. It is not uncommon to find accounts among both the Greeks and the Romans of widows who chose to follow their companions to the fields of Hades and Persephone. Arria had another daughter who was also named Arria. Her son-in-law Thrasea tried to persuade her with this argument: ‘Would you advise your daughter to die with me if my life were to be taken from me?’ ‘I certainly would,’ she replied, ‘if she had lived as long and in as much harmony with you as I have with my Paetus.’ (2) When she finally obtained permission to visit her husband and say goodbye, on the day he was to kill himself and carry out the imperial order, she found Paetus pale and despondent, dagger in hand, without the courage or conviction to carry out his sentence. Arria took the dagger from Paetus’s hands and, opening her own wrists, handed it back, saying, Paete, non dolet (3).

There was no longer the same pain, nor tears, nor the grief of being a mother,

when she was no longer entirely… a mother. Now dead, she no longer suffers. Did the dagger part her body and soul? Did the scattering of her atoms bring eternal peace? Did the gods receive her in their divine embrace? There is now more life in her death, still so painful to us two thousand years later as we contemplate her image, so distant and yet so intimate. Every account like this one overturns our peace of mind and reaffirms our duty to understand before we judge. The body, now lifeless, awaits its return to the earth, always sacred… Has the soul now joined her dead body? Fannia’s memory is now our memory… and, uncertain as we are about the fate of the soul and of death, let us call to mind the ancient mysteries once more…”

1. I LETTERS OF PLINY – By Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus Translated by William Melmoth Carta XXXIV, To Nepos. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2811/ 2811-h/2811-h.htm#link2H_4_0003
2. Pliny, Idem.
3. “Paetus, it does not hurt!” ibid

In. REIS, Alexandre H. História do Suicídio. Livro 1 - Variações Antigas e o Domínio do Cristianismo. Belo Horizonte, Páginas Editora, 2020. The passage quoted is on pages 353–354.

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