Who doesn’t love a good old sex scandal? Well, apart from possibly at least one of the parties caught up in it. Although at least one target of a Fleet Street sex scandal responded with a splendidly insouciant, “So what?”, most of us would be at least embarrassed to be caught in flagrante delicto.
But we love gossipping about others’ peccadilloes. Which shouldn’t be surprising for the descendants of troops of horny, gossipping apes who spent a great deal of the past million or so years trying to shag each other behind each others’ backs. Today, a penchant for illicit rumpy-pumpy seems to be practically a requirement for celebrity or high office.
Sex scandals, though, have an ancient history. Who’s rooting who behind whose back has created some of the most enduring stories in human history, and helped bring down the mightiest rulers. Here are just a few of them.
Cleopatra and Mark Antony are arguably the most famous lovers in history. But Julius Caesar got there first, coaxed by the Egyptian queen into sleeping with her so that he might save her from her scheming brother. She bore Caesar a son before the Roman dictator was assassinated. Enter Mark Antony, whom she promptly seduced in a ploy to get the handsome Roman general help her cling to power. The lady Pharaoh bore him twins before the whole affair started to slide south. Antony was defeated in battle and died of a self-inflicted wound in Cleopatra’s arms. Grief stricken, she also took her own life, with poison. Thus ended the reign of the pharaohs as Rome became the new world superpower.
Long before Antony and Cleopatra, though, there was a whole lotta shaggin’ goin’ on among the pyramids.
In 1155 BCE, the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses III was assassinated in a plot instigated by one of his wives, Tiye, who hoped to put her son Pentawer on the throne instead of the pharaoh’s chosen successor, Ramesses IV. The plan ultimately failed, but not before Rameses IV commissioned 12 judges to investigate the murder.
The only problem was that at least three of the judges were seduced by women linked to the conspiracy. The randy judges had their ears and noses cut off, which may or may not have put a damper on the fun.
Back to Rome, the “dog-headed tryst” occurred during the reign of Tiberius. In what may have been history’s first fursuit romp, a nobleman named Decius Mundus seduced a devout matron named Paulina by a clever ruse. Paulina, you see, was devoted to the Egyptian gods (Rome being a pretty ecumenical place). So Decius bribed the priest of Isis to tell Paulina that the god Anubis wished to meet her. When Paulina dutifully went to the temple that night, Decius appeared wearing a jackal’s head and presumably nothing else, and had his wicked way.
In another corner of the Classical world:
Canduales, the degenerate king of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia in what is now western Turkey, one day asked his bodyguard, Gyges, if he wanted to see his wife naked. Gyges declined but was eventually persuaded by the kinky monarch to hide in her chamber and watch as the queen undressed. Unfortunately, she spotted Gyges and learning of her husband’s betrayal of trust gave the sheepish bodyguard a choice: kill Canduales and marry her, or she would publicly accuse Gyges of spying on her, a crime punishable by immediate execution.
Three guesses which option the voyeuristic guard took.
But there’s a good reason Ancient Rome has become synonymous with high-placed degeneracy. The teenaged Emperor Elagabalus took adolescent horniness to truly the next level.
He married four women, slept with countless others (including a Vestal Virgin), and numbered male courtiers among his many lovers. He was also rumored to have prostituted himself, wore makeup and wigs, and preferred to be called a lady and not a lord. And all this before his 18th birthday!
And how can we talk about Roman perversion without mentioning Caligula?
Caligula gleefully embraced sexual perversity as a given. Emperor of Rome from 37 to 41, his reign was marked by cruelty, sadism, and extravagance. He regularly slept with his three sisters—Agrippina the Younger, Drusilla, and Livilla—and lent them out to other men. His many salacious escapades included numerous liaisons with male and female lovers, with the Roman historians Suetonius and Cassius Dio adding that the tyrant even tried to turn his palace into a brothel.
There is, of course, some reason to doubt that Seutonius was exactly a reliable source, but it all makes for riveting history, nonetheless.
The Middle Kingdom was not about to be left out of the ancient shenanigans, though.
Queen Dowager Zhao, the mother of Qin Shi Huang, who would later become the first emperor of China, was the concubine of politician Lu Buwei. Access to her was restricted, which often meant Lu Buwei was unable to sneak into the royal chamber for a “quickie.” Dissatisfied, the queen ordered Lu Buwei to seek a solution. Not wishing to displease her—and facing possible exposure and persecution—the minister came up with a bizarre solution. He disguised a well-endowed youth named Lao Ai as a eunuch. As a ‘castrated’ male, Lao Ai was free to enter the women’s quarters without suspicion, where he serviced the queen until the ruse was discovered. Lao Ai was executed for his sins, the disgraced queen imprisoned, and her children, conceived with Lao Ai, murdered.
A thousand years later, Chinese nobles were still at it.
According to the ancient Chinese chronicle Zuo Zhuan, or ‘The Commentary of Zuo,’ the seventh-century noblewoman Xia Ji, whose father was overlord of Zheng state, thoroughly enjoyed the company of men. Three of her conquests, an official named Lord Ling of Chen and two of his ministers, got a kick out of wearing her underwear and bragged about it, which enraged Xia Ji’s son, Xia Zengshu. One night at a drunken party, Ling joked about Xia Zengshu’s paternity, and was promptly murdered for the insult by the younger man. Ling’s two underlings escaped and fled to the safety of the rival state of Chu, ruled by King Zhuang. After executing Xia Zengshu for his crime, King Zhuang then invaded Chen, thus becoming the only winner in this sordid tale of sin and sex.
MSN
Don’t even let’s get started on the Marquis de Sade, Lord Byron, or Francis Dashwood…
