I was watching HBO's Rome yesterday and every character in the series seems to be very unafraid of dying. They try to avoid it, but they are very quick to accept it and are even nonchalant about it. One scene that made me doubt this representation in particular is when the Pompeian mob is beating down Atia of the Julii's door and the family is very casually discussing their suicide arrangements (not to be captured alive). There's even time for her daughter to demand another person to kill her instead of her mother, because she's still angry at her.
Is it possible to know if this attitude towards death was real, or can we just assume this is the director's choice? Were the Romans so sure of an after life that they didn't think death was such a big deal? Would this explain why everyone was always so eager to become emperor even when you would most likely end up murdered?
If you read the accounts of Sulla's and especially the Triumvirs proscriptions in Appian you will find plenty of Romans running for their lives. Here is Appian from Civil Wars Book 4. He claims to have the actual proscription order, in Greek translation of course. It's a very interesting set of passages. I won't give the proscription order here - too long - but I will give you some Roman reactions.
When it was known that men were being seized and massacred, although there was no list of those who had been previously sentenced, every man thought that he was the one whom the pursuers were in search of. Thus in despair some were on the point of burning their own houses....
All were required to afford opportunity for searching their houses. Those who received fugitives, or concealed them, or refused to allow search to be made, were liable to the same penalties as the proscribed, and those who informed against concealers were allowed the same rewards....
Some descended into wells, others into filthy sewers. Some took refuge in chimneys. Others crouched in the deepest silence under the thickly-packed tiles of their roofs. For some were not less fearful of their wives and ill-disposed children than of the murderers, while others feared their freedmen and their slaves; creditors feared their debtors and neighbours feared neighbours who coveted their lands.
Others concealed themselves and made abject entreaties, or tried to thrust aside the danger, or to buy themselves off.
That's enough to make the point. The[ whole book] (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Appian/Civil_Wars/4*.html) is worth reading. Romans were not all Stoics as Cato. Plenty tried to escape, and many did. Keaveney in his biography of Sulla has a list of named survivors of Sulla's proscriptions, but I don't have that on hand.
Romans were just people, dude. Americans can jump on grenades or wander away from their posts, or shoot themselves in the foot. You hear about the guys who were unafraid of death because they were the exception. The late Republican institution of exile was more or less explicitly a form of escaping capital punishment and there's a list of something like 130 named exiles in Kelly's A History of Exile in the Roman Republic. Again, not even Romans wanted to die. The ones you read about are the exception.