Cobra\'s killing Cleopatra

[Senovara]

Those folks were well acquainted with what kinds of poisonous snakes lived in their own area, and would probably be able to indentify the bite size and match it to likely biters.

There are snake venoms so deadly that they kill in a matter of a couple of minutes or sometimes even less. I don't know about Egyptian asp venom, and since we can't determine the species, we'll never know about that exactly.

I agree. I'd imagine Cleopatra who was highly educated in many things, would've known about these types of poisons.

And, seeing this from a woman's point of view, better to die with honourable suicide than stand humilation by Octavian and the romans and live in fear for the rest of days. She probably figured Octavian would have her killed anyway.