Military outposts along the expanse of the Great Wall of China during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) included a “barracks brothel.” In addition to their regular duties, government prostitutes were trained as reserve soldiers in the event of an attack by Mongolian hordes.
The homosexual meaning of the word “fag,” which originally was used to describe a cigarette, came from the early 1900 belief that smoking was effeminate.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
Men haven’t always bragged about the size of their penises, ancient Greeks reportedly admired the small penis and felt larger members were ugly.
Mesopotamian kings argued that their “right of the first night” – that is, the duty of deflowering a virgin bride to ensure communal fertility – was such an egregious task that they actually charged the groom-to-be a fee to perform the ritual, and those who couldn’t pay were forbidden to marry.
In India, pagan priests once walked naked through the streets beckoning the faithful to caress the priest’s sacred penis.
Cereal legend Dr. John Harvey Kellogg not only was celibate despite being married, he also strongly advocated abstinence to ensure good health. Also tops on his list of no-no’s was masturbation. Thankfully, he wrote a book detailing the 39 signs for detection of “the secret vice of self-abuse,” which included having round shoulders, eating clay and having acne.
The Feast of Lupercalia, an ancient Roman celebration held every February 15th in dedication to the fertility god Lupercus and goddess of love, Venus, featured a “lottery” where eligible bachelors could draw from a large sum the name of a young maiden to do with as he wished for the next year. Valentine’s Day is said to have evolved from this ancient Roman feast day.
Athenian legislator (sixth century BC) Solon passed a law that let dads sell their fornicating daughters into slavery.
Still, Solon didn’t have much problem with the fornicating fathers as he instituted the state-controlled brothel. Not only did these legalized brothels include male homosexual as well as heterosexual establishments, the fees for the services offered were government regulated.
Proving that sex has always held mankind’s center of attention, in 1955, archaeologists in Corsica discovered phallic monuments of six to ten feet high penises, dating all the way back to the Bronze Age (circa 4000 BC).
In ancient Rome, bestiality, like today’s modern boxing matches, was a public sporting event.
So much for sexually repressed nuns: To repel their would-be Scandinavian rapists, the nuns of a convent in Coldingham, Scotland in 870 AD cut off their noses and upper lips. Word has it that it actually worked.
Those trusty English knights during the first Crusade spent their entire campaign fund on prostitutes.
A hot bed of religion and sexuality, ancient Babylon would require that all women had to serve as prostitutes at the temple before getting married. Historians report that the unattractive women had to sometimes serve three to four years before finally being chosen.
The T’ang Dynasty Empress, Wu Hu (683-705 AD), insisted that all visiting dignitaries perform oral sex on her to pay her homage.
Not one to take adultery too lightly, the Russian czar Peter I forced his wife Catherine to watch her lover’s execution, then had his head pickled in spirits and kept in the bedroom. While he didn’t hold himself to the same high moral standards, he did expect his mistresses to. One who proved unfaithful to him had her head meet the same fate.
The expression “get laid” supposedly has its roots in the “Everleigh” bordello in 1900’s Chicago (“I’m going to get Everleighed tonight”).
Pope Alexander VI, during one of his many orgies, had fifty prostitutes service the male partygoers with a prize given to the one with the most stamina. Now that’s a religious experience.
It was believed that the fierce Amazon women warriors would burn off their breasts as young girls in order to better use a bow and arrow, hence the name amazone, which means “breastless” in Greek.
Achilles, the famous Greek god of Achilles Heel fame, had sex with the Amazon queen, Penthesilia, but not before he killed her.
The Greek Goddess of love and sex, Aphrodite (Venus for the Romans), was born from her father’s castrated penis, which had fallen into the sea.
A man of God indeed: King Solomon at one time had 700 wives and 300 concubines according to the eleventh chapter of first Kings.
Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle, proving once and for all that lacking such measures of masculinity is necessarily an indicator of a man’s mettle.
Julius Caesar was known as the husband of every woman and the wife of every man.
The Egyptian Pharaoh Cheops used income from prostitution, including that from his daughter whom he pressed into harlotry, to finance the construction of The Great Pyramid at Giza. In the 18th Century, another term for anal sex was “navigate the windward passage.”
