Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/245

 ANTONY. 237 which slie had written and sealed ; and, pntting ever3'body out of the monument but her two women, she shut the doors. Caesar, opening her letter, and finding pathetic prayers and entreaties that she might be buried in the same tomb with Antony, soon guessed what was doing. At first he was going himself in all haste, but, changing his mind, he sent others to see. The thing had been quickly done. The messengers came at full speed, and found the guards apprehensive of nothing ; but on open- ing the doors, they saw her stone-dead, lying upon a bed of gold, set out in all her royal ornaments. Iras, one of her women, lay dying at her feet, and Charmion, just ready to fall, scarce able to hold up her head, was adjusting her mistress's diadem. And when one that came in said angril}^, " Was this well done of your lady, Charmion ? " " Extremely well," she answered, " and as became the descendant of so many kings " ; and as she said this, she fell down dead by the bedside. Some relate that an asp was brought in amongst those figs and covered with the leaves, and that Cleopatra had arranged that it might settle on her before she knew, but, when she took away some of the figs and saw it, she said, " So here it is," and held out her bare arm to be bitten. Others say that it Avas kept m a vase, and that she vexed and pricked it with a golden spindle till it seized her arm. But what really took place is known to no one. Since it was also said that she carried poison in a hollow bodkin, about which she wound her hair ; yet there was not so much as a spot found, or any symptom of poison upon her body, nor was the asp seen within the monument ; only something like the trail of it was said to have been noticed on the sand by the sea, on the part towards which the building faced and where the windows were. Some relate that two faint puncture-marks were found on Cleopatra's arm, and to this account Caesar seems to have given credit ;