Mark Gagnon

But, crazy twist, Cleopatra is still alive, barricaded in her own mausoleum.

Now, when Octavian's soldiers capture her, she realizes her fate.

She's going to be taken to Rome...

publicly humiliated, and then executed as a warning to any other potential rebels.

Now, this is completely unacceptable for someone who literally told everyone and kind of believes that she's a living goddess.

So around August 12th, 30 BC, Cleopatra commits s**t in her mausoleum.

Allegedly.

Now, here is where the historical record gets murky.

Apart from taking her life, there is another famous story about Cleopatra dying from an asp bite, basically like a small viper or an Egyptian cobra.

However, this story, once again, comes from Roman propaganda and not Egyptian sources outright.

According to this version, she had poisonous snakes smuggled into her prison in a basket of figs and basically committed suicide by allowing herself to be bitten.

But modern toxicologists point out a problem with the story.

Egyptian cobras are large snakes, way too big to hide in a fruit basket.

And their bites don't always kill, but when they do, death can take hours and oftentimes involves convulsions and swelling and very obvious external symptoms that someone just got bit.

Now, Roman sources describe Cleopatra's death as peaceful with no visible marks on her body.

So this suggests that she probably used a fast acting poison rather than a snake venom.

But of course, you know, the theory still persists.

This is why Cleopatra is often depicted as, you know, having snakes around her.

There'll be a lot of sculptures of her like holding snakes and stuff.

So as a pharaoh, Cleopatra would have had access to exotic poisons from throughout the ancient world, and Egyptian medical texts describe several substances that could have likely killed her really quickly with a relatively peaceful death.