11. She Committed Suicide Either by Snakebite or a Fatal Opium Cocktail
The story goes that, after Cleopatra and Antony lost everything, Cleo committed suicide by having a snake bite her. Plutarch claims that she hid an asp in a basket of figs and let it nibble on her. He admits, though, that “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.”
Or perhaps Cleopatra didn’t die by snakebite, but instead she downed a lethal cocktail. What would her beverage have contained? Perhaps opium, hemlock (what Socrates used to kill himself), and deadly wolfsbane.
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