Examples

Notable mass suicides

• During the late 2nd century BC, the Teutons are recorded as marching south through Gaul along with their neighbors, the Cimbri, and attacking Roman Italy. After several victories for the invading armies, the Cimbri and Teutones were then defeated by Gaius Marius in 102 BC at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae (near present-day Aix-en-Provence). Their King, Teutobod, was taken in irons. The captured women committed mass suicide, which passed into Roman legends of Germanic heroism: By the conditions of the surrender three hundred of their married women were to be handed over to the Romans. When the Teuton matrons heard of this stipulation they first begged the consul that they might be set apart to minister in the temples of Ceres and Venus; and then when they failed to obtain their request and were removed by the lictors, they slew their children and next morning were all found dead in each other's arms having strangled themselves in the night.
• The 960 members of the Sicarii Jewish community at Masada, who collectively committed suicide in the first century A.D., rather than be conquered and enslaved by the Romans. Each man killed his wife and children, then the men drew lots and killed each other until the last man killed himself.
• The occasional practice of mass suicide known as Jauhar was carried out in medieval times by Rajput communities, when the fall of a besieged city was certain in order to avoid capture, dishonour and forced conversion. The best known cases of Jauhar are the three occurrences at the fort of Chittaur in Rajasthan, in 1303, in 1535, and 1568.
• In 1336, when the castle of Pilėnai (in Lithuania) was besieged by the army of the Teutonic Knights, the defenders, led by the Duke Margiris, realized that it was impossible to defend themselves any longer and made the decision to commit mass suicide, as well as to set the castle on fire in order to destroy all of their possessions, and anything of value to the enemy.
• During the Ottoman occupation of Greece and shortly before the Greek War of Independence, women from Souli, pursued by the Ottomans, ascended the mount Zalongo, threw their children over the precipice and then jumped themselves, to avoid capture.
• In April and May 1945 about 900 residents of Demmin, Germany, committed mass suicide in fear of the advancing Red Army.
• Japan is known for its centuries of suicide tradition, from seppuku ceremonial self-disemboweling to kamikaze warriors flying their aircraft into American warships during World War II. During that same war on the island of Saipan hundreds of trapped Japanese committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the invading American forces.
• The Order of the Solar Temple mass suicide killed 74 people in two towns in Switzerland in October 1994. About two thirds of the deaths were murders, including the ritual murder of a newborn.
• The Heaven's Gate mass suicide occurred in a hilltop mansion near San Diego, California, in 1997. They believed an alien spaceship was following in the tail of the Comet Hale-Bopp and that killing themselves was necessary to reach it. The victims were self-drugged and then suffocated by other members in a series of suicides over a period of three days. Thirty-nine died, from a wide range of backgrounds.

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