
Cleopatra expires languidly in the painting Cleopatra's Last Moments (1892) by the little-known artist D PauvertCleopatra did not kill herself in 30BC by letting an asp sink its poison-laced fangs into her delicate flesh, as everyone thought. Instead she swallowed alethal of drugs — opium, hemlock and aconitum. At least, that is what Professor Christoph Schaefer of the university of Trier says. He tells a German television programme, “Back then this was a well-known mixture that led to a painless death within just a few hours, whereas the snake death could have taken days and been agonising.”
Mind you,...