Why cleopatra killed herself

Cleopatra was determined that she would not be paraded through the streets of Rome before being executed, so she began to test poisons on condemned prisoners to see which one would be best. Deciding that the fast poisons were too painful, and the least painful were too slow, she apparently turned to animal venoms and settled on the bite of an asp. She continued work on her mausoleum to ensure she had a fitting place to see out eternity and left instructions for her mummification when the time came.

However, Mark Anthony was still very much alive and returned to the palace to find her. Grievously wounded but still alive he was at last told that Cleopatra lived and he was helped to her tomb by her servants. The entrance was already sealed, so he was hauled up to a window on a rope. Cleopatra then began to mourn him in the traditional manner, by beating her breast, cutting herself and covering her face and hands with his blood.

Mark Anthony tried to calm her and they drank a last glass of wine together before he died in her arms. Fearing that Cleopatra would kill herself and set fire to her treasures Octavian ordered his men to keep her talking with promises that her son would be allowed to rule Egypt after her death while others crept into the tomb to seize her.

Cleopatra continued to mourn and harm herself, eventually falling into a fever from her wounds. She refused to eat but Octavian reputedly threatened to harm her children if she did not recover, as he wanted her to feature in his triumph.

Some later commentators have suggested that she may have been murdered by Octavian rather than committing suicide, but there is no evidence for this.

Although she may have been a figurehead for a rebellion against him, he could simply have let her die of a fever at this point, so murder seems unlikely. It is claimed in some sources that Octavian visited her when she had recovered and she tried to seduce him. It also is the version adhered to by the Augustan poets, who wrote within a decade after Actium. Horace Odes , I. Martial, too, associates a viper with Cleopatra Epigrams , IV.

Whether a rhetorical flourish, the manner of Cleopatra's death was an exotic one, befitting a queen of Egypt.

It would have been ironic as well that the cobra, symbolic of the intention to protect the queen, would have been the means of her death. The Greeks do posit an alternative explanation. Strabo is the earliest source for Cleopatra's suicide and even may have been in Alexandria at the time she died. Plutarch wrote more than a century after the events he describes, Dio, a century later still, although his source probably was a history by Olympus, Cleopatra's personal physician, whom he mentions, LXXXII.

He is of two minds: whether it was "by the bite of an asp or for two accounts are given by applying a poisonous ointment" XVII. Roman authors, however, continued to insist otherwise. Suetonius, a contemporary of Plutarch, indicates in his Life of Augustus that she died from the bite of an asp, the poison of which Octavian had tried to have sucked from the wound by the Psylli, snake charmers from North Africa famous for that ability XVII. Florus, a younger contemporary, has Cleopatra, dressed in her finest raiment, apply two serpents II.

Shakespeare, too, has her being bitten by two snakes: "Here on her breast there is a vent of blood, and something blown [swollen]; The like is on her arm" Antony and Cleopatra , V. A student of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and second-place winner of the Prix de Rome, Alexandre Cabanel was among the most successful academic painters of the later nineteenth century, known both for his lush renderings of the female nude, such as The Birth of Venus , as well as classical subjects such as Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners above.

Dio relates, in his discussion of Cleopatra's preparation for her suicide, that "she kept at hand fire to consume her wealth, and asps and other reptiles to destroy herself, and she had the latter tried on human beings, to see in what way they killed in each case" LI. Plutarch, too, speaks of Cleopatra fascination with poisons, witnessing herself which venomous creature was most efficacious.

Cleopatra also played on Antony's fear of being poisoned, who refused to take any food that had not been tasted. Laying a garland of poisoned flowers on his head, she suggested, as the revelry grew wilder, that they all drink their chaplets. As Antony was about to drink from the cup into which he had scattered his flowers, she stopped him.

Hearing a report that she had died, Antony stabbed himself with his own sword. His men carried him to Cleopatra, and he died in her arms. When they broke down the mausoleum door, they found Cleopatra lying lifeless on a golden couch, her two servants dead and dying beside her. She was 39 years old at the time she died, and had ruled Egypt for more than 20 years. There are several problems with this theory , according to modern Egyptologists.

In addition, not all snake bites are deadly, and those that are kill their victims slowly and painfully, making it hard to believe a snake was able to kill Cleopatra and her two maids in the short time it took for Octavian to receive her note and send his guards. Either of these would have killed her and her servants more quickly and effectively than a snake bite. In , the German historian Christoph Schaefer suggested that Cleopatra may have ingested a fatal mix of hemlock, wolfsbane and opium, based on his studies of ancient documents and his work with a toxicologist.

The truth, however, remains elusive.