In fact, she had been living now so long under the unlimited and unrestrained dominion of caprice and passion, that reason was pretty effectually dethroned, and all self-control was gone.

She was now nearly forty years of age, and, though traces of her inexpressible beauty remained, her bloom was faded, and her countenance was wan with the effects of weeping, anxiety, and despair.

She was, in a word, both in body and mind, only the wreck and ruin of what she once had been.
When the burial ceremonies were performed, and she found that all was over--that Antony was forever gone, and she herself hopelessly and irremediably ruined--she gave herself up to a perfect frensy of grief.
She beat her breast, and scratched and tore her flesh so dreadfully, in the vain efforts which she made to kill herself, in the paroxysms of her despair, that she was soon covered with contusions and wounds, which, becoming inflamed and swelled, made her a shocking spectacle to see, and threw her into a fever.

She then conceived the idea of pretending to be more sick than she was, and so refusing food and starving herself to death.

She attempted to execute this design.