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Cleopatra chooses to kill herself in a manner of great significance to her subjects. She has always taken her Egyptian role seriously, and is the only ruler of her dynasty in three centuries to have learnt the Egyptian language. She is already a prisoner of Octavian, restricted by his guards to part of her own palace. She arranges for a small poisonous snake, an asp, to be smuggled into her quarters in a basket of figs. Cleopatra puts on her royal robes, lies on a couch of gold, and applies the asp to her breast. Sacred to Amen-Re, the Egyptian sun god, the snake both protects the royal house and deifies anyone it strikes. The queen's final moment is as dramatic, and as much remembered, as anything in her life. But it brings to an end the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt.