Maximinus Daia (270-313) (yes, the surname appropriately rhymes with 'Dire'), Caesar and Augustus of the Roman Empire in the East, flogger and flayer of Christians and a cat kicker (allegedly), misruled his part of the Ancient World before he was cornered in a cave out somewhere in Asia Minor. To prevent being captured alive, Daia suffocated himself by literally eating dirt until he choked to death. Historian Edward Gibbon wrote in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire it was 'a fittingly disgusting way for this swine to have died'.