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"...Cleopatra sent to Caesar a letter which she had written and sealed; and, putting everybody 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 opening 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 angrily, '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." Plutarch, Life of Antony (Dryden trans.) Jean André Rixens, The Death of Cleopatra (1874) This breathtakingly bittersweet scene depicts
the mesmerizing beauty, even in death, of the fabled Cleopatra.
Here, her faithful servant Iras by her side, Charmion adjusts the
queen’s diadem before also falling lifeless. With the characteristically
Victorian Orientalist panther skin in the foreground, Rixens’classic
tells of the fabled asp that legend says allowed the queen to choose
her own death.
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