Suicide is heroic imperative, man, woman, and child.

In The Jewish War, Josephus records the words of Elezar, commander of the Jewish resistance following the destruction of the Second Temple:

After all we were born to die, we and those we brought into this world; this even the luckiest must face. But outrage, slavery, and the sight of our wives led away to shame with our children — these are evils to which no man is subject by the laws of nature; men undergo them through their own cowardice if they have a chance to forestall them by death and will not take it.

Elezar continues:

A man will see his wife violently carried off; he will hear the voice of his child crying “Daddy!” when his own hands are fettered. Come! While our hands are free and can hold a sword, let them do a noble service. Let us die unenslaved by our enemies, and leave this world as free men in company with our wives and children. That is what the Law ordains, that is what our wives and children demand of us, the necessity God has laid on us …

Josephus then reports that the men cut him short, “full of uncontrollable enthusiasm.” “As if possessed they rushed off, everyone anxious to be quicker than the next man, and regarding it as proof positive of manliness and wisdom not to be found among the last: so irresistible as desire had seized them to slaughter their wives, their little ones, and themselves.” “they clung resolutely to the purpose they had formed while listening to the appeal, and while they all retained feelings of personal affection, reason which had urged what was best for their dear ones, won the day.”

Josephus continues: “one and all disposed of their entire families, victims of cruel necessity, who with their own hands murdered their wives and children and felt it to be the lightest of evils!”

He concludes:

Unable to endure any longer the horror of what they had done each man lay down so that his throat may be slit, the final remaining thrusting a sword through his body. All but an elderly woman and five children died, 960 dead in all, as the Romans overwhelmed the walls of the mountain fortress of Masada.

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Josephus, The Jewish War, 365-6.