A close reading of two important scenes from books 9 and 10 of Vergil'sAeneid, reveals that the deaths of Euryalus and, more markedly,Nisus can be regarded as altruistic suicides (using E. Durkheim's typology).Mezentius' final act is an egoistic/anomic suicide. The text signalsa suïcide by using 'moriturus'. The focalisation used by the narratormakes the reader sympathize with the suicidal characters. Trying tounderstand these deaths as suicides, is more fruitful than seeing them asinstances of some sort of secularised 'deuotio'.
