Charmian clasped her niece to her heart, kissed her, pricked her arm lightly, and gave her the other pin, saying: 

“Now it is your turn.  Our hearts were filled with love for one who understood how to bestow it as none other ever did, and our love was returned.  What matters all else that we sacrificed?  Those on whom the sun shines need no other light.  Love is pain,” she said in dying, “but this pain—­especially that of renunciation for love’s sake—­bears with it a joy, an exquisite joy, which renders death easy.  To me it seems as if it were merely following the Queen to—­Oh, that hurt!” Iras’s pin had pricked her.

The poison did its work quickly.  Iras was seized with giddiness, and could scarcely stand.  Charmian had just sunk on her knees, when some one knocked loudly at the closed door, and the voices of Epaphroditus and Proculejus imperiously demanded admittance.

When no answer followed, the lock was hastily burst open.

Charmian was found lying pale and distorted at the feet of her royal mistress; but Iras, tottering and half stupefied by the poison, was adjusting the diadem, which had slipped from its place.  To keep from her beloved Queen everything that could detract from her beauty had been her last care.

Enraged, fairly frantic with wrath, the Romans rushed towards the women.  Epaphroditus had seen Iras still occupied in arranging Cleopatra’s ornaments.  Now he endeavoured to raise her companion, saying reproachfully, “Charmian, was this well done?” Summoning her last strength, she answered in a faltering voice, “Perfectly well, and worthy a descendant of Egyptian kings.”  Her eyes closed, but Proculejus, the author, who had gazed long with deep emotion into the beautiful proud face of the Queen whom he had so greatly wronged, said:  “No other woman on earth was ever so admired by the greatest, so loved by the loftiest.  Her fame echoed from nation to nation throughout the world.  It will continue to resound from generation to generation; but however loudly men may extol the bewitching charm, the fervour of the love which survived death, her intellect, her knowledge, the heroic courage with which she preferred the tomb to ignominy—­the praise of these two must not be forgotten.  Their fidelity deserves it.  By their marvellous end they unconsciously erected the most beautiful monument to their mistress; for what genuine goodness and lovableness must have been possessed by the woman who, after the greatest reverses, made it seem more desirable to those nearest to her person to die than to live without her!”

   [The Roman’s exclamation and the answer of the loyal dying Charmian
   are taken literally from Plutarch’s narrative.]

The news of the death of their beloved, admired sovereign transformed Alexandria into a house of mourning.  Obsequies of unprecedented magnificence and solemnity, at which many tears of sincere grief flowed, honoured her memory.  One of Octavianus’s most brilliant plans was frustrated by her death, and he had raved furiously when he read the letter in which Cleopatra, with her own hand, informed him of her intention to die.  But he owed it to his reputation for generosity to grant her a funeral worthy of her rank.  To the dead, who had ceased to be dangerous, he was ready to show an excess of magnanimity.