A quiz question · hard
What does modern toxicological analysis suggest Cleopatra most plausibly used to kill herself in 30 BCE?
Plutarch's asp story (written 140 years later) has physical problems — three women dying within minutes from one cobra is implausible. Christoph Schaefer's 2010 reconstruction argues for a deliberately-prepared poison mixture shared between Cleopatra and her two attendants.
Read the full story →From the story
The Last Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt Who Killed Herself at Alexandria in August 30 BCE With Either an Asp or a Mixture of Hemlock, Aconitum, and Opium Cleopatra VII killed herself at Alexandria on approximately 10 August 30 BCE, eleven days after her partner Mark Antony's suicide and three weeks after the city's fall to Octavian. The conventional account of the Egyptian cobra concealed in a basket of figs is first attested by Plutarch a century later. A 2010 reanalysis by Christoph Schaefer argued for a self-administered poison mixture as the more plausible cause of death.
Related questions
- Cleopatra VII had two famous Roman political alliances, both producing children. The two Romans were?
- In September 31 BC two Roman generals fought a naval battle off western Greece that decided whether Rome would be ruled by a republic or by a single man. The losers fled to Egypt and killed themselves the following summer. Who won the battle?
- Cleopatra VII killed herself in Alexandria on 10 or 12 August 30 BC, after Octavian had captured the city. The traditional method was?
- Cleopatra ruled Egypt and is on every Egyptian souvenir from Cairo to Aswan. What was her ethnic background, actually?