Now it is said that the asp was brought with those figs and leaves, and was covered with them; for that Cleopatra had so ordered, that the reptile might fasten on her body without her being aware of it. But when she had taken up some of the figs and saw it, she said, “Here then it is,” and baring her arm, she offered it to the serpent to bite. Others say that the asp was kept in a water-pitcher, and that Cleopatra drew it out with a golden distaff and irritated it till the reptile sprang upon her arm and clung to it. But the real truth nobody knows; for it was also said that she carried poison about her in a hollow comb, which she concealed in her hair; however, no spots broke out on her body, nor any other sign of poison. Nor yet was the reptile seen within the palace; but some said that they observed certain marks of its trail near the sea, in that part towards which the chamber looked and the windows were. Some also say that the arm of Cleopatra was observed to have two small indistinct punctures; and it seems that Caesar believed this, for in the triumph a figure of Cleopatra was carried with the asp clinging to her. Such is the way in which these events are told. Though Caesar was vexed at the death of Cleopatra, he admired her nobleness of mind, and he ordered the body to be interred with that of Antonius in splendid and royal style. The women of Cleopatra also received honourable interment by his orders. Cleopatra at the time of her death was forty years of age save one, and she had reigned as queen two-and-twenty years, and governed together with Antonius more than fourteen.

Octavian went on to cement his position as Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.

TO HEAL AN ASP BITE

On Theriac to Piso

Attr. Galen

Translated by Robert Leigh, 2016

Galen of Pergamon (AD 129–c. 200) was a Greek doctor of the Roman Empire, whose ideas about human physiology – most notably the theory of the humours – were still current in the seventeenth century. The following comes from a treatise attributed to him on a particular antidote or ‘theriac’. The antidote was originally invented by Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus, a kingdom south of the Black Sea, which the Romans conquered in the mid-first century BC. Mithridates was famous for taking daily antidotes to protect himself against potential poisoning. The Romans stole his recipes when they conquered his territory and developed some of them further. Nero’s private doctor Andromachus improved his so-called ‘theriac’ by adding the flesh of vipers to the recipe, as he details in the text below. Galen presents his treatise as a response to a request from one Piso, whose son was treated with theriac following a riding accident.