The exact circumstances surrounding the death of Cleopatra VII cannotreliably be recovered from Plutarch's seemingly detailed description of it atthe end of his Vita Antonii. While displaying an otherwise exemplary narrativeskill, the (perhaps unsolvable) question remains to what extent the biographerintentionally depicts the queen as a human being, especially when comparedwith the parallel account by Cassius Dio. Indeed, the last descendant of thePtolemies is undeniably endowed with 'tragic' qualities, indications of whichcan be discerned from lexical instances, as well as from elements of theAristotelian tragedy. This contribution therefore tries to conduct a small-scaleanalysis in the same vein as other more comprehensive literary studies on the'tragic dimension' of Plutarch's Vitae (viz. Crassus, Alexander) attaching ameaningful significance to this aspect, in particular when compared to otherLives (viz. Caesar) where it is rather unexpectedly missing.
