There remains one slight problem: no one knows whether this is actually how it happened.
Cleopatra VII died in Alexandria in August 30 BC, aged 39. Mark Antony had died shortly before, Octavian had defeated their forces, and Egypt was on the verge of falling definitively under Roman rule. The queen realised she had lost.
What appears to be relatively well-established historically is that she died whilst in Octavian’s custody and that her death suited the political staging of the Roman victory remarkably well.
But how did she die?
The version we are all familiar with is that of the asp. According to a later tradition, Cleopatra is said to have had a snake smuggled into her chambers—in a basket of figs—and then deliberately allowed herself to be bitten.
Except that the ancient sources themselves are far less definitive than our collective imagination.
Strabo is particularly interesting because he provides our oldest surviving account of Cleopatra’s death. And he already suggests two possibilities: a snake bite or the use of poison applied to the body. In other words, very shortly after the events, it was already unclear exactly what had happened. (PubMed Central (PMC))
Plutarch wrote more than a century after the queen’s death. It is notably in his account that the story becomes far more romanticised. He mentions the snake concealed amongst figs, but also reports other hypotheses. Above all, he himself acknowledges that the truth about the exact circumstances of her death remains unknown. Cassius Dio, writing even later, mentions small marks found on Cleopatra’s arm, without being able to establish their origin with certainty. (PubMed Central (PMC))
The famous snake is therefore beginning to lose some of its lustre.
Firstly, there is a practical problem. The snake generally associated with Cleopatra’s death is not our little European asp viper but probably an Egyptian cobra. An animal that can grow to a considerable size and is not exactly the easiest thing to conceal in a basket of fruit.
The snake would then have to bite Cleopatra at just the right moment, inject a sufficient amount of venom and, according to some accounts, also play a part in the deaths of her two maids, Iras and Charmion.
That starts to demand a great deal of co-operation from a cobra.
Modern toxicological research has therefore seriously questioned this version of events. A study published in *Toxicology Reports* in 2021 highlights that the snake theory remains possible in certain scenarios – particularly with a cobra whose venom can cause paralysis and respiratory failure – but that it poses several difficulties. The authors also examine the hypothesis of a poison, either liquid or applied to a wound. (PubMed Central (PMC))
Other researchers have taken this a step further. The historian Christoph Schäfer and the toxicologist Dietrich Mebs concluded, after comparing historical sources with toxicological data, that a snakebite was highly unlikely and that a mixture of plant-based poisons administered deliberately was a more credible explanation. (De Gruyter Brill)
Cleopatra may therefore have poisoned herself.
And this hypothesis actually fits quite well with what ancient texts say about the queen. According to Plutarch, she was said to have taken an interest in the various ways of dying and the effects of poisons. Alexandria was, moreover, one of the great medical and scientific centres of the Hellenistic world, where pharmacology and toxicology were studied. Cleopatra was certainly no stranger to this world. (PubMed Central (PMC))
There is, however, another possibility, and it is far more political: could Cleopatra have been assassinated?
The main beneficiary of her disappearance was, of course, Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus. A dead Cleopatra was infinitely easier to turn into a symbol of Roman victory than a living queen capable of speaking, negotiating or becoming a political problem.
The assassination theory therefore exists and is worth mentioning. But it suffers from a major flaw: we have no solid evidence to suggest that Octavian had her killed. Contemporary historical and toxicological research therefore generally continues to regard suicide as the most plausible explanation. (ScienceDirect)
This leaves us with a fascinating question: why did the snake win?
Because it tells a far more compelling story than a vial of poison.
In Egypt, the cobra possessed considerable symbolic power. The uraeus – the raised cobra worn on the pharaonic crown – embodied, in particular, royal power and divine protection. Dying by the snake thus transformed Cleopatra’s demise into an almost mythological scene: the last queen of Egypt left this world through the very animal that symbolised Egyptian royalty. (DOI)
And this portrayal also suited Rome perfectly.
During Octavian’s triumph, with Cleopatra already dead, an effigy of the queen accompanied by a snake is said to have been used to represent her demise. This version subsequently became established in literature and the arts, to the point where, for us, it has become almost a historical fact. (PubMed Central (PMC))
This is perhaps what is most fascinating about Cleopatra’s death.
We know that she died. We know roughly when and under what political circumstances. We have good reason to believe that she chose to take her own life rather than become Octavian’s captive and trophy.
But we do not know exactly how she went about it.
A snake? Ingested poison? A toxic substance introduced into a wound? A poisoned instrument? Murder disguised as suicide?
Two thousand years later, none of these questions can be definitively answered. A recent toxicological review acknowledges this itself: the mystery remains unsolved. (PubMed Central (PMC))
The most reasonable conclusion is therefore less spectacular than Hollywood’s: Cleopatra most likely committed suicide, but we do not know how. Poisoning seems at least as plausible – and, to some researchers, more plausible – than the famous cobra bite.
History has left us with a dead woman.
Legend has added a snake.
And, as is often the case, it is the legend that everyone has remembered.
