Fascinating History

Murad IV We may well have warnings of the risks associated with smoking, on packets of cigarettes nowadays, but in 17th century Turkey things were a bit more serious. Sultan Murad IV was so opposed to his subjects smoking that he issued a decree stating that anyone found smoking would be killed and their corpse left to rot, at the spot where they were executed, even if that was a coffee shop, a street or home. Naturally this was a very effective deterrant. However, Sultan Murad was not your average guy and many things as well as smoking irritated him to the point of warranting the death penalty. Like his predecessors he was rather mad and also an alcoholic. He could often be seen running through the streets at night, drunk, while simultaneously killing any unfortunate passer-by with his sword (they obviously irritated him by being there...). His favourite sport was to shoot arrows and bullets at the women of his harem and occasionaly ordered that many of them be drowned in front of him...

"Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth..." "To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing - here is the perfection of character." "All things are in process of change. You yourself are ceaselessly undergoing transformation and the decay of some of your parts and so is the whole universe." "If he sinned, the harm is his own. Yet perhaps, after all, he did not!"

When the emperor Caracalla was murdered in 217, the fourteen-year-old Elagabalus succeeded him. He only ruled for 4 years, but in that short period of time he commited a variety of grotesque and debauched acts, enough to make Caligula and Commodus seem rather plain. His real name was Bassianus but as he developed an intense interest in worshippng the Syrian god Elagabal, became High Priest of the cult and so had his name changed to Elagabalus. To honor his god, he demanded that hundereds of cattle were slaughtered daily on huge sacrificial altars. He had a temple built on the Palatine Hill and ordered the Romans to worship a statue of a giant phallus, which didn't go down very well at all... Eventually he decided he was the god embodied. He started to wear women's clothes and make-up, implored his surgeons to cut his penis off and make him a vagina and when they said tehy could not do this he settled for circumcision. His body is said to have been very effeminate and he had a m...

Catherine the Great was empress of Russia from 1762 until she died in 1796. She was born in 1729 in Poland and in 1744 was taken to Russia to marry the young Grand Duke Peter, heir to the throne and not of a sane mind. For seven years during their marriage Peter spent his time playing with toy soldiers and dogs and showed no interest in sex. In fact he had a physical disability, a very tight foreskin, which may have played an important part in that matter. Finally the empress Elizabeth gave Catherine the permission to take a lover, which she did and was soon pregnant. She convinced Peter it was his own child, as was the plan anyway. In the meantime he had been circumcised so that he could perform the sexual act. Catherine developed a taste for young soldiers. She had a special area built in her bedroom, which was curtained off and where she received her lovers. Gregory Orlov was her on and off lover for around thirteen years. He was said to possess excellent equipment, unbelievable ‘st...

As a young man Augustus was accused of various improprieties. For instance, Sextus Pompey jeered at his effeminacy; Mark Antony alleged that Julius Caesar made him submit to unnatural relations as the price of adoption; Antony’s brother Lucius added that after sacrificing his virtue to Caesar, Augustus had sold his favours to Aulus Hirtius in Spain, for 3,000 gold pieces and that he used to soften the hair in his legs by singeing them with red-hot walnut shells. Not even his friends could deny that he often commited adultery, though of course they said, in justification, that he did so for reasons of state, not simply passion – he wanted to discover what his enemies were at by getting intimate with their wives or daughters. Mark antonym accused him not only of indecent haste in marrying Livia, but of hauling an ex-consul’s wife from her husband’s dining room into the bedroom – before his eyes too! He brought the woman back, says Antony, blushing to the ears and with her hair in disorde...

Octavian, or Augustus, as he is better known, was the first emperor of Rome. He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, not because he didn't have a father already, but because Caesar took a liking to him and also left him two thirds of his estate. Octavian was born Gaius Octavius on 23d September 63 B.C. He was shrewd, astute and took a while to make up his mind about what to do, but once he made a decision there was no going back. He was only 18 when Julius Caesar was assassinated and by the age of 38 he was emperor. He was said to be extremely good-looking, with clear blue piercing eyes, he delighted when he starred young ladies out and they averted his gaze by looking to the floor, as if they were overpowered by him. Despite his stern reputation, he had several mistresses whose company he enjoyed immensely. However, there was only one woman Octavian is thought to have really loved and that was Livia. Livia was only 19 when Octavian practically abducted her from her husband Nero (...

An actor performs in the modern Globe on the Bankside . Actors weren't always the softies they are now reputed to be. For instance, on a freezing, snowy December night in 1598, a troupe of them turned up at a recently vacated theatre in Shoreditch, armed with "swords, daggers, bills, axes and such like" as one contemporary account described it. The weather's contumely was such that the Thames had frozen over. Yet, with the aid of lanterns, this company of actors surrounded the area with guards and tore down the entire theatre in one evening. As the penumbra receded in the dawn hours, they began to load the stripped timber onto wagons, which they used to transport the timber to Southwark. Before getting into the reasons for this apparent lunacy, it bears remarking that the actors could do this because a) there was no regular police force in London at the time, and b) they were all trained in the use of weapons, as actors were obliged to be in the days before stuntm...