Cleopatra is a legendary queen, the last pharaoh of Egypt, whose life and death became the subject of many legends and formed the basis of great literary works. The suicide of Cleopatra is one of the many mysteries associated with one of the greatest beauties of the past.
The life of Cleopatra
It is impossible to find out the secret of Cleopatra's death without understanding what led her to thoughts of suicide, that is, without familiarizing herself with the main milestones of her life.
Cleopatra VII was a descendant of the Ptolemaic dynasty, ascended to the Egyptian throne by Alexander the Great himself. By the time of her birth, the once mighty Egypt was increasingly dependent on neighboring states. Her father, Ptolemy XII, decided to conclude an alliance with the consul of Rome, which was gaining all the great power, Pompey, and for this he went to him. During his absence, his wife and eldest daughter usurped power. The pharaoh who returned, executed both, and his youngest daughter, Cleopatra, married his son and heir - her brother, nine-year-old Ptolemy XIII. After a short time, he died, and the couple he created became the rulers of the country. Cleopatra was 18 years old at the time.
Kinship marriages for the pharaohs were not just common, but a prescribed tradition.
When Pompey, pursued by Julius Caesar, fled to Egypt, priests and courtiers ruled there, removing the young Pharaoh and his wife from public affairs. Ptolemy XIII was ready to accept the fugitive, but his retinue was not. They organized the assassination of the consul. This did not save Egypt from war with Rome, Caesar fought with Pharaoh and killed him. Another sister of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Arsinoe, declared herself the ruler of the country. It was at this time that Cleopatra went to Caesar. According to legend, she organized everything so that she would be brought, wrapped in a carpet, like a magnificent booty, and laid at the feet of the winner. The commander could not resist the spell of the Egyptian beauty and became her lover. He elevated her to the throne, and in order to legitimize her right to rule in the eyes of the people, a new marriage was organized, with another brother, who became Pharaoh Ptolemy XIV. By this time, Cleopatra was already a mature, thirty-year-old woman and she did not allow anyone to stand between her and the power. Soon her husband and co-ruler died, but the position of the queen was so strong that she declared herself the sole pharaoh of Egypt and married her own son by Caesar, Caesarion, who became Ptolemy XV.
Legends say that Cleopatra poisoned her second husband, Ptolemy XIV.
After the death of Caesar at the hands of the conspirators, Mark Antony was appointed military governor of the region, competing for power over Rome with the future founder of the Roman Empire, Caesar's nephew, Octavian. Cleopatra managed to charm this commander too. For almost ten years he provided her with all kinds of support, and there is even a version that he married her. It was these relations that served as a formal reason for Octavian to express his distrust to Mark Antony. To win over the Senate and to declare Antony - an enemy of the state.
Mark Antony "returned" to Egypt, which means to Cleopatra, the territories over which her father had lost control, including Cyprus and the lands on which modern Lebanon is located.
When Mark Antony suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Octavian's troops in the naval battle near Actium, his fate was decided. Although the lovers fled to Alexandria, to which the Roman army advanced for a whole year, the defeat was clear. It was then, presumably, that Cleopatra thought about suicide and began to look for a poison that would kill her, kill her quickly and painlessly. The Egyptians, long before her, for centuries experimented with various poisons, and papyri describing their action more than once caught the eye of the queen during her research related to the search for various miraculous compounds to maintain youth and beauty. It's time to try them out.
Death of Cleopatra
In those days, doctors studied poisons not so much in search of a deadly weapon as in the hope of discovering a new medicine. The works of Dioscridus, Pliny the Elder and Galen were devoted to poisons of plant, animal and mineral origin and their effects on the body. It is believed that in search of the perfect means for suicide, Cleopatra also familiarized herself with the Roman sources available to her. She checked lapping based on salts of lead, mercury, copper, arsenic and antimony, gave slaves to drink with the blood of toads, which was considered poisonous, made decoctions, demanded to find and bring poisonous snakes to her. The queen spent time in orgies and feasts with her lover, then in contemplation of the death of numerous slaves and sentenced criminals.
When Antony committed suicide by throwing himself on his own sword, Cleopatra already knew which poison she would prefer. After the death of her beloved, the queen tried once again to resort to the power of her charm, but Octavius was deaf to her charms. Cleopatra was awaiting a shameful return to Rome, through the streets of which she was once carried along with Caesar on a golden throne. According to the legend, which formed the basis of the great Shakespeare's play "Antony and Cleopatra", the great beauty died from a cobra bite, but scientists doubt this version. In their opinion, the queen could not choose a long death, which is accompanied by excruciating vomiting, diarrhea and slow respiratory arrest. And the site of the cobra bite swells very quickly. Could the one who took so long to choose the weapon, the one who was so proud of her beauty and was afraid of shame, choose such an untidy and painful death?
Studying the texts available in Cleopatra's time, they suggested that she most likely died after taking a cocktail of opium and aconite. The first plunged her into happy oblivion, while the second killed the last Pharaoh of Egypt, a woman, before whose spell two great Roman generals could not resist.
