You know, I can live my life without the burden of not knowing how Cleopatra died.
Thanks guys!
Experts ponder improbable size of Cleopatra's asp
A pair of expert debunkers have concluded that Cleopatra's legendary asp was too small to be a plausible killer, the BBC reports. Many historical sources agree that Cleopatra committed suicide in 30BC at the tender age of 39, by prompting a cobra to bite her. Her demise came after the defeat of her lover Mark Anthony at the …
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 13:43 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: Scientists
I'm not sure they have debunked it. Most snake bites would be in the calves, I would guess. And because a snake starts injecting the venom the moment it penetrates something, if you're wearing loose trousers half of it gets squirted down the inside of them rather than the inside of your leg anyway. Does that have exactly the same chance of killing you if you held the snake to your throat for example? Most snakebites are dry without venom? Presumably if you keep goading the snake and keep getting more and more bites, you'll get it to inject some venom at some point? They seem to be ignoring the circumstances that this was a deliberate suicide attempt.
Plus we know little of what Cleopatra's state of health actually was at the time anyway. Ancient people's were ignorant of a lot of things but that's not the same as stupid. They knew a lot about the environment in which they lived and I imagine the people in Cleopatra's time knew a lot more about what as poisonous and what wasn't than laypeople today. The understood things like poison and it working its way through the bloodstream. They understood that you had veins and arteries and that a wound to one of these was a lot more dangerous than a wound to a calf or arm muscle. For example, your tongue is filled with blood vessels right near the surface. Want to commit suicide by cobra? Hold it to your mouth, stick your tongue out and keep provoking it. I don't know how likely that is to kill you but I bet it's far more likely than normal statistics on snake bites and it's hardly beyond an educated Greek or Egyptians brain power for the time period.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 20:02 GMT Triggerfish
Re: Scientists - Dry bites
Yes eventually they do. A dive buddy (who worked in underwater videography), found a largish King Cobra wrapped around his toilet. So he tied his camera to a broomstick and decided to annoy it, first it made a threat display, then it starting dry striking the lens, after a few hits then it started using venom (you could see it on the lens), after a few more strikes it seemed to use a lot more venom.
Snakes will dry bite as a threat, because most animals aren't stupid enough to stay around and they want to conserve the venom, but they absolutely will use it if they feel like they are in danger and their opponent isn't backing down.
It also depends on the snake some snakes are mellower than other species, sea snakes are really chilled and yet almost all species are highly venomous I have never felt worried encountering one, I wouldn't fuck around with a black mamba though one African lady described them to me as "an extremely angry snake." *
Also it does not need to be adult a baby snake is born fully venomed and are said to be more dangerous as they have less control over there bites.**
*There was a beeb prog on rattlesnakes and the researches said even individuals among the same species had different temperaments.
**Recently seen an article somewhere saying this may not be true but have not read it yet.
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Friday 23rd October 2015 08:16 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Scientists - Dry bites
Also it does not need to be adult a baby snake is born fully venomed and are said to be more dangerous as they have less control over there bites
Same control, but in the Cobra case considerably more aggressive. Most cobra bite incidents in India are from juvenile cobra, not adult.
Also, the most "allegoric" part of history is the snake species and name. It was written a century later by a person who would not be able to tell the difference between a cobra, a sidewinder and a lebetine viper as he lived in an area where none of these are present (Rome). In addition to that Egypt in those days traded with a various states (now well forgotten) which were between Sahara and the jungle (Kush, Aksum, etc). So if she wanted to commit suicide she could have gotten her hands on the "Guaranteed Death of Sub-Saharan Norht Africa" - the Gaboon viper. That kills. Period. Regardless of the size and age of the specimen. It is also docile enough to be carried around in a fruit basket.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 20:39 GMT Charles Manning
They certainly have not debunked it
As a yoof I kept snakes in South Africa, so I think I can contradict an over-funded boffin.
"Most bites are dry bites" That's maybe true for accidental bites, or as an average over all bites, where you alarm a snake and it just does a showy strike to scare you off. However it you grab the snakes head and mash it against your body to force it to bite (as you would for a suicide) then it is likely the snakes is going to feel very threatened and will think it one of those times worth expending some of that valuable venom to save its life.
"A cobra grows to 6 or 8 ft and won't fit in a fig basket". Sure, but they start off as babies of a few inches long and are venomous from the start. A 3ft cobra is surely up to the job.
A friend of mine was bitten by a 3ft black mamba (sure, not the same species) and only lived because it was a glancing blow and had immediate medical attention including ICU for a week or so. Mambas grow to over 14 ft, so that 3 foot snake was a juvenile.
So, on behalf of the taxpayers.... can we have the money back?
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 11:39 GMT Mage
Slapper?
Supposedly smart rather than pretty. There is no description of her beauty AFAIK in contemporaneous sources and the coins with her head were not complementary.
Also while she liked to big up the African and Egyptian stuff, she was ethnically Greek. See Alexander the Great and what the four generals ruled when he died.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 13:44 GMT Darryl
Re: Slapper?
Are people from the Americas not Americans?
No. No we're not. People from the USA are called Americans. As well, they, and the rest of us are known as North Americans or South Americans, depending on which continent their homeland is located on.
The standard global practice is to refer to people based on the continent they live on. People in Europe are Europeans. People in Africa are Africans. There is no continent called 'America'.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 14:27 GMT Tom 38
Re: Slapper?
For this post I use the appropriate icon. My post said:
Are people from the Americas not Americans?
This drew your ire:
The standard global practice is to refer to people based on the continent they live on. People in Europe are Europeans. People in Africa are Africans. There is no continent called 'America'.
If you're still not getting it, "The Americas" is plural.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 12:21 GMT Kubla Cant
Re: Slapper?
But old Alex was Macedonian. Not the same as Greek.
Curiously, the Greek government objects strenuously to the modern state of Macedonia on the grounds that ancient Macedonia was Greek.
Magna Græcia included Asia Minor, Sicily, Naples, Marseilles and a few places on the East coast of Spain, so it's probably not stretching things too far to describe Alexander as Greek.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 13:28 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Slapper?
the Greek government objects strenuously to the modern state of Macedonia on the grounds that ancient Macedonia was Greek
Implying that modern fubar appendage of europe has anything in common with "Magna Græcia" (also, the "Magna" is there for a reason, like in "Greater Germany". One could argue that Poles build the German Empire but better not ...)
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 15:38 GMT Mage
Re: Slapper?
More like saying a Texan was American.
The Former Yugoslavian republic of Macedonia or the other bit?
Alexander (son of Philip) was a King (Basileus) of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon.
The Ptolemaic Kingdom (/ˌtɒləˈmeɪ.ɪk/; Ancient Greek: Πτολεμαϊκὴ βασιλεία, Ptolemaïkḕ Basileía)[3] was a Hellenistic [i.e. Greek] kingdom based in Egypt. It was ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty which started with Ptolemy I Soter's accession after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and which ended with the death of Cleopatra VII and the Roman conquest in 30 BC.
In the early 5th century the royal house of Macedon, the Temenidae, was recognised as Greek by the Presidents of the Olympic Games. Their verdict was and is decisive. It is certain that the Kings considered themselves to be of Greek descent from Heracles son of Zeus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_I_Soter
Macedonia or Macedon (/ˈmæsɪˌdɒn/; Greek: Μακεδονία, Makedonía; Ancient: [ma͜akedoní.a͜a]) was an ancient kingdom on the northern periphery of Classical Greece and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece.
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Friday 23rd October 2015 15:51 GMT Triggerfish
Re: If you need to kill people with snake bites
Try a Russells Viper, almost the same LD50 as the inland Taipan (so about as venomous you are going to get) and also known to be pretty narky.
Try this youtube link where they drop some venom in blood see how quick it causes it to coagulate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WvnjCkLbvY
Also they kill a lot of people especially in places like India, because mambas and cobras tend to hunt and so will get out of the way of people often. Vipers tend to rely on their camoflage which is usually exceptionally good, and so will stay still and hope you do not notice them which often means someone then steps on it and cause it to bite. Drop one in the garden and send someone out to clear the leaves.
Although saying that, there was an incident a few years back now in Bangkok where a guy had bought a cobra (there's places in BKK you can buy them, western diamonbacks, taipans etc etc) and released it into his flat to bump off his wife.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 17:45 GMT Grikath
Re: It's all lies, I tell you.
Well the term "propaganda" is proper latin, and the Romans leveraged the ...art... with great precision ( and the application of ingenious cruel-and-unusual punishments if someone dared to doubt the Official Version, large scale where needed. Because Rome! )
Rome as an empire started to decline more or less when the ruling class started to believe their own propaganda.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 22:23 GMT Richard Taylor 2
Re: It's all lies, I tell you.
Rome as an empire started to decline more or less when the ruling class started to believe their own propaganda.
I think you need to use a little of your leisure time to read some history. Sorry to burst your little balloon but it was an ee bitty more complex than that and most high school/A level students with a history/latin qual could do better in one sentence.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 15:44 GMT Mage
Re: "So it would be impossible to use a snake to kill two or three people one after the other."
Three snakes, or else those nasty scorpions, or the really poisonous Geography Cone Snail (which sounds like a Terry Pratchett invention, but is real). The venomous variety of cone snail fires a poisonous hollow tooth at a fish. It grows them quick enough to avoid running short of dinners.
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 18:00 GMT Graham Marsden
I preferred...
... this examination of the historical facts (which is probably about as accurate as Plutarch's version...)
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Thursday 22nd October 2015 21:50 GMT x 7
A viper, not a cobra
traditionally an "asp" has always been synonymous with "viper", not "cobra", and there are plenty of venom-bearing vipers which could have done the job living within realistic distances.
take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_viperine_species_and_subspecies
for a list of potentials. All are toxic, some extremely so, and many fit the size criterion, Even mildly venomous species such as the adder can kill in some circumstances - many of the others are far more efficient at death
FWIW, my understanding from school teaching, and from english-language literature was always that a viper did the job, not a cobra. It would be interesting to see what makes people think it was a cobra
Biting the hand that feeds IT
