Who gave Cleopatra the snake?
How did Cleopatra die? The famous answer is a snake, hidden in a basket of figs.
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Sources
Sources
- Plutarch, Life of Antony 71, 82, 84-86 (trans. B. Perrin, Loeb 1920) and Sir Thomas North's translation (1579); Cassius Dio, Roman History 51.13-14 and 51.21 (trans. E. Cary, Loeb 1917); Strabo, Geography 17.1.10; Suetonius, Life of Augustus 17; Velleius Paterculus 2.87; Horace, Odes 1.37; Virgil, Aeneid 8.696-697; Propertius 3.11; Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women; Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra 5.2 (First Folio, 1623); F. P. Retief and L. Cilliers, "The death of Cleopatra", Acta Theologica (2005); "Cleopatra killed by drug cocktail?", Discovery News, 1 July 2010 (Christoph Schäfer, Dietrich Mebs, Alain Touwaide, Adrienne Mayor).
Pictures
- paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures of Cleopatra's death from the 1500s to the 1800s (Cagnacci, Reni, Guercino, Artemisia Gentileschi, Delacroix, Jordaens, Lagrenée, Giampietrino, Michelangelo, Rixens, Collier, Reginald Arthur, Cabanel and others); portraits, coins and objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum (CC0); the pages read in the script in old printed editions; old views of Alexandria (Braun and Hogenberg, the Description de l'Égypte, David Roberts, Courdouan); Andreani's woodcuts after Mantegna's Triumphs of Caesar; the silent films Cleopatra (1912) and Marcantonio e Cleopatra (1913), the surviving fragment and publicity photos of Cleopatra (1917). The 1934 and 1963 films are named, not shown.
Credits
- the Dendera relief by Olaf Tausch (CC BY 3.0); an Egyptian cobra by Ricardo Hurtubia (CC BY 2.0); Jordaens's painting photographed by Dguendel (CC BY 4.0); Taposiris Magna by Einsamer Schütze (CC BY-SA 3.0). Via Wikimedia Commons.