When Octavian read the letter which Cleopatra’s messenger had brought him, he realised at once what had happened, and hastened to the mausoleum. Changing his mind, however, he sent some of his officers in his place, who, on their arrival, found the sentries apprehensive of nothing. Bursting open the door they ran up the stairs to the upper chamber, and immediately their worst fears were realised. Cleopatra, already dead, lay stretched upon her bed of gold, arrayed in her Grecian robes of state, and decked with all her regal jewels, the royal diadem of the Ptolemies encircling her brow. Upon the floor at her feet Iras was just breathing her last; and Charmion, scarce able to stand, was tottering at the bedside, trying to adjust the Queen’s crown.
One of the Roman officers exclaimed angrily: “Charmion, was this well done of your lady?” Charmion, supporting herself beside the royal couch, turned her ashen face towards the speaker. “Very well done,” she gasped, “and as befitted the descendant of so many Kings”; and with these words she fell dead beside the Queen.
The Roman officers, having despatched messengers to inform Octavian of the tragedy, seem to have instituted an immediate inquiry as to the means by which the deaths had taken place.[146] At first the sentries could offer no information, but at length the fact was elicited that a peasant carrying a basket of figs had been allowed to enter the mausoleum, as it was understood that the fruit was for the Queen’s meal. The soldiers declared that they had lifted the leaves with which the fruit was covered and had remarked on the fineness of the figs, whereupon the peasant had laughed and had invited them to take some, which they had refused to do. It was perhaps known that Cleopatra had expressed a preference for death by the bite of an asp,[147] and it was therefore thought that perhaps one of these small snakes had been brought to her concealed under the figs. A search was made for the snake, and one of the soldiers stated that he thought he saw a snake-track leading from the mausoleum over the sand towards the sea. An attendant who had admitted the peasant seems now to have reported that when Cleopatra saw the figs she exclaimed, “So here it is!” a piece of evidence which gave some colour to the theory. Others suggested that the asp had been kept at hand for some days in a vase, and that the Queen had, at the end, teased it until she had made it strike at her. An examination of the body showed nothing except two very slight marks upon the arm, which might possibly have been caused by the bite of a snake. On the other hand, it was suggested that the Queen might have carried some form of poison in a hollow hair-comb or other similar article; and this theory must have received some support from the fact that there were the three deaths to account for.