Rough Roman Memes

Explanation: The Romans traditionally regarded suicide as an 'honorable' alternative to being killed, rather than seeing it as a sin as Abrahamic religions do. As such, it is very common in Roman history to read about Romans unaliving themselves at every turn. Many times, when sentenced to death, a Roman citizen would be given the opportunity to commit suicide beforehand - a more 'honorable' end than the executioner's block! This also comes up quite often when Romans lose against their enemies - fearing slavery or torture, Roman officers who felt like their position was well and truly screwed would fall on their sword, or have one of their own men run them through, to get a quick death, rather than a slow and humiliating one.

It was also used, however, as a demonstration of one's honor or loyalty - famously, the Roman general Germanicus threatened to kill himself when his soldiers attempted to declare him Emperor (and thus a rebel against the current Emperor), and the Roman general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo was ordered by the paranoid Emperor Nero to commit suicide due to his popularity - which he did, crying out 'Axios!' ("I am worthy!") as he did so. The Roman politician Cato the Younger killed himself so that Julius Caesar wouldn't be able to pardon him, and Brutus, Caesar's assassin, ran himself through after losing a battle against Caesarian loyalists (and hearing that his co-commander had killed himself earlier).

Speeding up after every suicide would make for a very quick summary of Roman history!