nd
devised many plans by herself. When she could accomplish nothing, she
feigned to change her mind and to repose great hope in him, as well as
great hope in Livia. She said she would sail voluntarily and made ready
many treasured adornments as gifts. In this way she hoped to inspire
confidence that she had no designs upon herself, and so be more free from
scrutiny and bring about her destruction. This also took place. The other
officials and Epaphroditus, to whom she had been committed, believed
that her state of mind was really as it seemed, and neglected to keep
a careful watch. She, meanwhile, was making preparations to die as
painlessly as possible. First she gave a sealed paper, in which she
begged Caesar to order that she be buried beside Antony, to Epaphroditus
himself to deliver, pretending that it contained some other matter.
Having by this excuse freed herself of his presence, she set to her task.
She put on her most beauteous apparel and after choosing a most becoming
pose, assumed all the royal robes and appurtenances, and so died.

[-14-] No one knows clearly in what manner she perished, for there were
found merely slight indentations on her arm. Some say that she applied
an asp which had been brought in to her in a water-jar or among some
flowers. Others declare that she had smeared a needle, with which she was
wont to braid her hair, with some poison possessed of such properties
that it would not injure the surface of the body at all, but if it
touched the least drop of blood it caused death very quickly and
painlessly. The supposition is, then, that previously it had been her
custom to wear it in her hair, and on this occasion after first making a
small scratch on her arm with some instrument, she dipped the needle in
the blood. In this or some very similar way she perished with her two
handmaidens. The eunuch, at the moment her body was taken up, presented
himself voluntarily to the serpents, and after being bitten by them
leaped into a coffin which had been prepared by him. Caesar on hearing of
her demise was shocked, and both viewed her body and applied drugs to
it and sent for Psylli,[71] in the hope that she might possibly revive.
These Psylli, who are male, for there is no woman born in their tribe,
have the power of sucking out before a person dies all the poison of
every reptile and are not harmed themselves when bitten by any such
creature. They are propagated from one another and they test thei