Could Cleopatra drink her pearls?
What poisons could have been used by Nero to poison Britannicus? History Television came to the Department of Chemistry to look for the answers.
Segments from two episodes of “Ancients Behaving Badly” were taped in the Materials Science Addition (MSA) and Chemistry Building. The series of eight, one-hour documentaries about tyrants in history are currently scheduled to be aired early in 2010 either in January or February.
Mel Usselman explored the legend of Cleopatra serving Marc Antony the most expensive meal to woo him. Legend has it that she took her most prized pearls, dissolved them in wine and then shared the drink with Marc Antony.
The question was could such a thing happen? Usselman constructed some fake pearls to test the scenario.
The original production plans were to film the segment about Cleopatra poisoning her brother Ptolemy in another university. But as Usselman puts it, the people at YAP Films “have been very impressed with our MSA labs and our departmental support,” that they decided to film parts of other episodes using one of the Chemistry laboratories as a backdrop.
Two graduate students volunteered to help with the production.
PhD candidate Christina Booker was featured on camera preparing the candidate poisons from the plants Henbane, Monk’s Hood and Rhododendron. At the same time, recent MSc graduate Robin Abel offered technical advice behind the scenes.
Abel was also on hand the next day when the crew filmed the extraction of three plant poisons: hemlock, strychnine and cyanide. For strychnine they used strychnos nux vomica seeds, they extracted cyanide from peach pits and for hemlock they used a bit of TV magic and substituted another plant. These poisons were the chief candidates used in the suspected murder of Nero’s stepbrother Britannicus.
The story goes that Britannicus was drinking hot wine at a dinner party and Nero supposedly arranged for Locustas to pour cold water in the wine. Britannicus drank the cooled wine and immediately after had a fatal seizure. It’s thought there was poison in the water. The question is “Which poison?”
Tim Erickson from the University of Illinois, Chicago discussed which of the candidate poisons could have killed Ptolemy and Britannicus.
As for the answers provided by Western and other researchers? Well, secrets that have been kept for 2,000 or so years will just have to wait for the television program to be aired in a few months.
We’ll let you know when the schedule for the ‘Western’ shows has been finalized.
Mitch Zimmer is a writer in the Faculty of Science.
Factbox
What happened?
One of the myths surrounding Cleopatra is that she dissolved rare pearls in wine and served the expensive drink to Marc Antony as an attempt to woo him. But could it happen like that?
The segment is expected to air early in 2010 as part of the “Ancients Behaving Badly” series on History Television. The documentaries are a British-Canadian joint production.