Cleopatra

kleo-pa'tra (99-30 B. C.). A queen of Egypt. The last of the Ptolemies. She was a handsome, profligate, artful woman. Many tales are told of her beauty, of her extravagance, and of her faithlessness, but none, of her good qualities. Her capital was Alexandria. Her kingdom was one of the fragments of the empire of Alexander. It lay, as she well knew, at the mercy of Rome. She murdered her husband that she might be free to intrigue. By personal influence she secured the good will of Rome during the rule of Julius Caesar, who received her at Rome with great magnificence and to whom she bore a son called Caesarion. After the assassination of Caesar, Antony--the same Mark Antony who made the celebrated speech over Caesar's dead body--visited her at Alexandria and fell into her snares. He forsook his Roman wife and lived chiefly at Alexandria the rest of his days, heaping wealth and honors on Cleopatra. Augustus decided to dissolve partnership with Antony and to overthrow him. This he did in a naval battle at Actium, during which Cleopatra fled home with her sixty ships. Antony followed and committed suicide by falling on his sword. Cleopatra tried to make peace with Augustus as she had with Caesar and with Antony. Finding that she was making no headway, and that Augustus designed to carry her home and have her walk in his triumphal procession through the streets of Rome, she caused a slave to bring her a basket of fruit in which a poisonous asp was concealed. Preferring death to humiliation, she thrust in her bare arm, so runs the story, and received a mortal bite. Conscience, she had none; but her pride was unbounded. Thus perished the last of the Ptolemies. Egypt became thenceforth a Roman province. See Ptolemy; Dido; Antony; Alexandria

If Cleopatra's death had been caused by any serpent, the small viper would rather have been chosen than the large asp; but the story is disproved by her having decked herself in "the royal ornaments," and being found dead "without any mark of suspicion of poison on her body." Death from a serpent's bite could not have been mistaken; and her vanity would not have allowed her to choose one which would have disfigured her in so frightful a manner. Other poisons are well understood and easy of access, and no boy would have ventured to carry an asp in a basket of figs, some of which he even offered to the guards as he passed; and Plutarch shows that the story of the asp was doubted. Nor is the statue carried in Augustus' triumph which had an asp upon it any proof of his belief in it, since that snake was the emblem of Egyptian royalty; the statue (or the crown) of Cleopatra could not have been without one, and this was probably the origin of the whole story.--Rawlinson.