Cleopatra VII killed herself in Alexandria on 10 or 12 August 30 BC, after Octavian had captured the city. The traditional method was?
The snake-bite story comes from Plutarch (writing about 130 years later) and is the tradition that has dominated subsequent European literature and visual art. Modern medical scepticism notes that cobra venom usually kills slowly and painfully — not the quick dignified death the traditional story describes — and proposes alternatives (a fast-acting poison concealed in a hollow comb, suffocation, even Octavian-arranged murder). The basket of figs detail is in Plutarch and may be folklore. Cleopatra was 39. Her son Caesarion was executed by Octavian within weeks.
Read the full facts →Cleopatra VII Philopator (69–30 BC) was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and the last reigning Macedonian-Greek monarch of the Hellenistic world. Her political alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony made her central to the closing decades of the Roman Republic. Her suicide in August 30 BC ended both the Ptolemaic dynasty and three centuries of Hellenistic rule in Egypt.
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