Alexas, the Eunuch (Symbol)
Cleopatra’s eunuch, Alexas, who doubles both as guardian and political operative, is at once a character and a symbol for castration and a more liminal identity generally. In spite of his literal castration, he is very strategic and determined to get what he wants. However, when his manipulative strategies catch up with him, he is left with few options for redemption. As someone from whom masculine social currency has been taken away, he symbolizes the concept of castration, or disempowerment.
Falling on his Sword (Symbol)
At the end, when Antony believes that Cleopatra is dead, he falls on his sword, which symbolizes his own form of castration, getting penetrated and killed by the very instrument with which he might have been a great warrior. It represents the ways that love has turned his outward, militaristic attitudes inward, and ultimately, undone him.
The Snakes (Symbol)
Likewise, the snakes that Cleopatra uses to kill herself are representative of her own fall from grace. The snakes kill silently and discreetly, poisoning the victim slowly, which represents a more feminized self-destruction, rather than a phallic or penetrative demise.
Omens (Symbol)
The omens seen in the Nile that Serapion discusses in the first scene are symbolic of a divine turn for the worse. They represent the fact that something horrible is doomed to happen in Rome. As we later find out, the omens were correct, as Egypt falls to the Romans and Cleopatra dies.
Bracelet (Symbol)
When Antony says he is leaving Egypt, Cleopatra and Alexas devise a plot to keep him there. Cleopatra sends him a bracelet that he is unable to fasten, and which Alexas tells him Cleopatra can help him with; the bracelet thus represents the hold that Cleopatra has on Antony and the fact that she is singularly important to him, the only one who can give him what he wants.
