How Did Cleopatra Really Die?

Cleopatra VII Philopator of Egypt was the last ruler of an independent Egypt in ancient times to wield actual sovereign authority. Although she ruled Egypt, she was of almost exclusively Greek ancestry. After her suicide on 10 or 12 August 30 BC at the age of around thirty-nine, Egypt was annexed by the Roman Republic (soon to be Roman Empire). Her death is often used by modern historians to mark the end of the Hellenistic Era in Egypt. In spite of all the historical significance that is ascribed to her death, however, we still do not know exactly how she committed suicide.

The most popular story about the death of Cleopatra is that she supposedly committed suicide by allowing an Egyptian asp to bite her on the breast. This event has been depicted in countless paintings, plays, books, and films. Indeed, Cleopatra’s death with an asp at her breast has become one of the most iconic death scenes in all of history. Despite its eternal popularity, however, this story is probably nothing more than a fanciful legend.

First-century AD sources on Cleopatra’s death

The truth is, although we can be confident that Cleopatra VII Philopator of Egypt really did commit suicide by some form of poisoning, no one knows exactly how she really did it. The Greek geographer Strabon of Amaseia (lived c. 63 BC – c. 24 AD), who wrote within living memory of Cleopatra’s reign and may have even been in Alexandria at the time of Cleopatra’s death, records two different accounts of Cleopatra’s famous suicide. One of them is that she killed herself using a poisonous ointment; the other is that she allowed herself to be bitten by an Egyptian asp.

A first-century AD Roman fresco from the House of Giuseppe II in Pompeii that is now generally believed to depict the death of Cleopatra depicts her wearing her royal diadem, surrounded by attendants, holding a kylix, or cup, and preparing to drink. This suggests that the painter of the fresco believed Cleopatra had killed herself by drinking some kind of poison.

ABOVE: First-century AD Roman fresco from the House of Giuseppe II in Pompeii depicting Cleopatra wearing her royal diadem, about to drink a cup of poison. Her son Kaisarion stands behind her, also wearing his royal diadem.

Second-century AD sources on Cleopatra’s death

The Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquilus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 AD) mentions in his Life of Augustus that some people at the time of Cleopatra’s death believed that she had died of snakebite. Nonetheless, Suetonius seemingly distances himself from this report, making it sound as though this was only a rumor that other people believed and not a reliable account that he personally gave any credit to.

The Greek biographer Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD) states in his Life of Marcus Antonius that no one knows exactly how Cleopatra really died, but he gives several different speculative accounts of her death anyways, including several claiming that she allowed herself to be bitten by an Egyptian asp, but also another version claiming that she took poison that she carried with her, hidden inside of a hollow comb. Here is what Ploutarchos says concerning the death of Cleopatra in section his Life of Marcus Antonius 86.1–3, as translated by Bernadotte Perrin for the Loeb Classical Library:

“It is said that the asp was brought with those figs and leaves and lay hidden beneath them, for thus Cleopatra had given orders, that the reptile might fasten itself upon her body without her being aware of it. But when she took away some of the figs and saw it, she said: ‘There it is, you see,’ and baring her arm she held it out for the bite. But others say that the asp was kept carefully shut up in a water jar, and that while Cleopatra was stirring it up and irritating it with a golden distaff it sprang and fastened itself upon her arm. But the truth of the matter no one knows; for it was also said that she carried about poison in a hollow comb and kept the comb hidden in her hair; and yet neither spot nor other sign of poison broke out upon her body. Moreover, not even was the reptile seen within the chamber, though people said they saw some traces of it near the sea, where the chamber looked out upon it with its windows. And some also say that Cleopatra’s arm was seen to have two slight and indistinct punctures; and this Caesar also seems to have believed. For in his triumph an image of Cleopatra herself with the asp clinging to her was carried in the procession. These, then, are the various accounts of what happened.”

In 1818, an ancient Roman encaustic painting depicting Cleopatra committing suicide by permitting an asp to bite her on the breast was discovered in the villa of the Roman emperor Hadrian at Tivoli. Hadrian took up residence in the villa in around 128 AD. The villa was used occasionally by later emperors until it fell into disuse in around the fourth century. The encaustic painting would therefore date to sometime between 128 AD and the fourth century AD. Although the original painting has been lost, a nineteenth-century steel engraving based on it has survived. Here is the steel engraving:

ABOVE: Nineteenth-century steel engraving depicting Cleopatra committing suicide by allowing an asp to bite her on the breast, based on a now-lost Roman encaustic painting

The Greek historian Kassios Dion (lived c. 155 – c. 235 AD) reports in Book Fifty-One of his Roman History that no one knows exactly how Cleopatra died, saying that they found her body with small puncture wounds on her arm, but no one knew what had caused them. He mentions that some people thought she had been killed by snakebite, but also that some people thought she had used a needle or a hairpin to puncture her arm and applied poison to the wound. Here is what he tells us in his Roman History 51.14.1–3, as translated by Earnest Cary for the Loeb Classical Library:

“No one knows clearly in what way she perished, for the only marks on her body were slight pricks on the arm. Some say she applied to herself an asp which had been brought in to her in a water-jar, or perhaps hidden in some flowers. Others declare that she had smeared a pin, with which she was wont to fasten her hair, with some poison possessed of such a property that in ordinary circumstances it would not injure the body at all, but if it came into contact with even a drop of blood would destroy the body very quietly and painlessly; and that previous to this time she had worn it in her hair as usual, but now had made a slight scratch on her arm and had dipped the pin in the blood. In this or in some very similar way she perished, and her two handmaidens with her.”

Below is a photograph of a classical Greek hairpin. The pins used in Cleopatra’s time would have been similar:

ABOVE: Photograph of an ancient Greek hairpin dating to around the fifth century BC on display in the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is possible that Cleopatra may have used a similar hairpin to cut her arm so she could apply poison to the wound and kill herself.

The Greek doctor Galenos of Pergamon (lived 129 – after c. 200 AD) writes in his De Theriaca ad Pisonem that some people thought Cleopatra had died of snakebite, but he also proposes another hypothesis that she bit her arm with her own teeth and then applied poison to the wound. Galenos’s hypothesis that she punctured her arm with her own teeth seems a bit less likely to me than the hypothesis that she used a needle or a hairpin to do it.

Why the asp hypothesis is dubious

The story that Cleopatra committed suicide by allowing herself to be bitten by an Egyptian asp is highly dubious for a number of reasons. For one thing, as Christoph Schaefer, a professor of ancient history at Trier University points out, a bite from an Egyptian asp is not always fatal. Since we know that Cleopatra definitely wanted to kill herself and we know from surviving texts that she knew a great deal about poisons, it is unlikely she would have chosen to be bitten by an asp because she would have known that there would be a relatively high chance of her surviving.

Furthermore, Schaefer also points out that snakes are notoriously uncooperative when it comes to biting people. This issue is complicated by the fact that Cleopatra committed suicide on either 11 August or 12 August 30 BC. Temperatures in Egypt during mid-August are extremely hot. Snakes are cold-blooded and they have a tendency to move a lot when it is very hot. According to Schaefer, then, an asp released under such presumably hot temperatures probably would not have lain still long enough to bite anyone.

Finally, as several of the ancient writers I have just mentioned explicitly note, no snake was ever found anywhere near the scene of Cleopatra’s body. If there ever was a snake, it was gone by the time they found her.

None of these factors definitively prove that Cleopatra did not kill herself by allowing an asp to bite her, but they do make this hypothesis seem highly unlikely. Quite frankly, if you are resolved to kill yourself, allowing yourself to be bitten by asp is one of the least practical ways you could possibly decide to do it.

Schaefer argues that Cleopatra most likely killed herself by drinking poison. He argues that she would have most likely used hemlock mixed with opium and wolfsbane, which would have given her a quiet, peaceful death. I am highly skeptical of his specific claims regarding which particular poison he thinks she probably would have used, but I am convinced that she most likely committed suicide by either cutting herself and applying poison to the wound, as described by several ancient writers, or by drinking poison, as shown in the fresco of her death from Pompeii.

Why the story that she died of snakebite became so popular

The story that Cleopatra died of snakebite is by far the most exotic and sensational of all the stories surrounding her death. Naturally, therefore, it has become the most famous. The story of Cleopatra having died of snakebite may have been especially popular among ancient Roman audiences because it emphasizes Cleopatra’s foreignness and easternness, which are both qualities the Romans would have strongly associated with her, since she was a Greek queen ruling over Egypt.

Nonetheless, other stories about Cleopatra’s death circulated as late as the Middle Ages. Some of these were even more sensational than the snakebite story. For instance, in his Legend of Good Women, the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (lived c. 1343 – 1400) describes Cleopatra as having committed suicide by hurling herself in to an entire pit full of venomous serpents.

By the Early Modern Period (c. 1500 – c. 1750), however, virtually all depictions of the death of Cleopatra seem to show her committing suicide by allowing an asp to bite her. The English poet and playwright William Shakespeare (lived 1564 – 1616) famously portrays Cleopatra as having died after letting an asp bite her in his tragedy Antony and Cleopatra, which was first performed in London in around 1607. In Act V, Scene II of the play, she says to the asp as it bites her breast:

“With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool
Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak,
That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass
Unpolicied!”

The death of Cleopatra has also been an extremely popular scene for painters and sculptors ever since the Renaissance. It was an especially popular scene for painters during the Baroque Period (lasted c. 1630 – c. 1750) because it afforded an opportunity to show a young, beautiful woman committing suicide in the overly melodramatic way that the Baroque painters really loved.

(It also gave them an opportunity to paint a woman’s bare breasts and, for some odd reason, male early modern Baroque painters seem to have really liked painting bare breasts.)

ABOVE: Drawing by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo dating to c. 1535 depicting Cleopatra being bitten by an asp

ABOVE: The Death of Cleopatra, painted in c. 1640 by the Italian Baroque painter Alessandro Turchi

ABOVE: The Death of Cleopatra, painted in 1658 by the Italian Baroque painter Guido Cagnacci

ABOVE: The Death of Cleopatra, painted between 1674 and 1675 by the Italian Baroque painter Benedetto Gennari

ABOVE: Engraving of the death of Cleopatra by Robert Strange from 1777, based on an earlier depiction by the Italian Baroque painter Guido Reni

ABOVE: The Death of Cleopatra, painted in 1874 by the French Academic painter Jean-André Rixens

Conclusion

Although the famous story about Cleopatra having allegedly killed herself by allowing an Egyptian asp to bite her on the breast goes all the way back to near the time of her death, it is far from the only story about how she died that was circulating in antiquity and it is highly unlikely to be historically true. It is much more probable that Cleopatra either drank poison or poisoned herself through a cut on her arm, possibly using a hairpin or a needle.