How did Cleopatra die?

Captured, and watched

Cleopatra outlived Mark Antony by only days (how he died). Octavian’s army held Alexandria from August 1, 30 BC, and he wanted one thing from the queen above all: her presence, alive, in his triumph in Rome. Her younger sister Arsinoe had been led through the city in Caesar’s triumph of 46 BC. Cleopatra knew what that meant. A lost passage of Livy, quoted by an ancient commentator on Horace, had her repeat in Greek, again and again: I will not be led in triumph.

Octavian’s friend Proculeius got into her tomb by a ladder through the high window and seized her as she drew a dagger. She was searched and guarded. When she tried to starve herself, Octavian threatened her children. Then a young officer, Cornelius Dolabella, warned her in secret that she and the children would be sent to Rome within three days (Plutarch, Antony 79–84).

The basket of figs

What follows is Plutarch’s account, written more than a century later. She asked to pour offerings at Antony’s tomb, bathed and ate a splendid meal. A man from the countryside arrived with a basket; the guards looked inside, saw fine figs and let him through. Cleopatra sent Octavian a sealed tablet asking to be buried beside Antony, then shut the doors. Octavian read it, guessed at once and sent men running.

They found her dead on a golden couch, dressed as a queen. Of her two women, Iras was dying at her feet, and Charmion, barely standing, was setting the diadem straight on her head. When a guard asked angrily whether this was well done, Charmion said it was, and fitting for a descendant of so many kings. Then she too fell beside the couch (Antony 85).

Asp, or poison?

Here Plutarch stops and admits that the truth is unknown. Some said the asp came hidden in the figs. Others said she kept it in a water jar and provoked it with a golden spindle until it struck her arm. Others said she carried poison in a hollow pin in her hair. No snake was found in the room, though some claimed to have seen its trail by the sea, and her arm was said to show two faint pricks (Antony 86). The geographer Strabo, who was in Egypt a few years later, gives the same two choices: an asp’s bite or a poisoned ointment (Geography 17.1.10).

Octavian chose the snake. In his triumph of 29 BC, Plutarch says, an image of Cleopatra was carried with the asp clinging to her. Suetonius and Cassius Dio add that he even sent for Psylli, North African snake charmers, to suck the venom from her wound, still hoping to save her for his parade (Augustus 17; Dio 51.14). Horace’s ode on her death has her handle fierce serpents, and Virgil sets twin snakes behind her at Actium.

Many modern historians doubt it. An Egyptian cobra, the likeliest “asp,” is often longer than a meter and a half (5 feet), hard to hide among figs, and its bite does not reliably kill fast. Three women died that day, which a prepared poison would explain better. Others answer that the cobra was the emblem of Egyptian kingship, rearing on the pharaoh’s crown, and a queen might have chosen it on purpose.

Her age, the date and the grave

Plutarch gives her age exactly: she lived thirty-nine years, was queen for twenty-two of them and shared power with Antony for more than fourteen. The day is less certain; most historians put it around August 10 or 12, 30 BC. Octavian let her be buried beside Antony with royal honors, but the tomb has never been found. With her the Ptolemaic dynasty ended after nearly three centuries, and Egypt became Octavian’s own province. Her son by Caesar, Caesarion, was hunted down and killed (Caesar’s son). Shakespeare later set the asp at her breast. The ancient writers who mention a bite put it on her arm.