Good people of Waterloo, it is again that time of the month when I cause you to lose your appetites, your minds, and quite possibly your tempers. Yes, it’s the column where I accuse your ancestors of horrible, vile, and unspeakable practices! As it turns out, when you look at history, there were fewer Aristotles and Confuciuses, and more Beavises and Butt-heads. Sometimes it even turns out that our well-respected historical personages made the latter look tame.
Louis XIV Had Butt Operation, Court Followed Suit
In 1685, the King of France developed a painful swelling in his anus. It got worse and worse, and the king was in constant pain. It probably didn’t help that he hated bathing, and only had two baths in his entire life. (Before you say “the poor Queen”, she had the same number.) He did believe in enemas, and had a couple hundred of them, but none of them could give him any relief. Eventually, the royal court called upon the barber-surgeon Charles-Francois Felix and charged him with curing the king’s fistula. After experimenting on numerous peasants, because that’s what people did back then, Felix prepared some new surgical instruments and operated successfully on the king.
We are all adults here, and just because the king was suffering from a royal pain in the ass, that isn’t ipso facto a reason to giggle. However, the behaviour of the French court at the time is much more amusing. It then became fashionable for the courtiers to go around wearing large bandages on their bottoms, in honour of the king. Many pretended to have fistulas themselves, because Louis XIV had made them cool. Some of the more fanatical even demanded to have the same operation, in honour of the king. Now that is some real ass-kissing.
Diogenes Believed in, Exemplified the Worst in Human Nature
You may or may not have heard of the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic, but he was highly influential. It is from him that we get the word “cynical,” meaning “dog-like” in ancient Greek, because he believed that humans were evil, corrupt, dishonest, and hypocritical, and would do better to behave like dogs. He lived in extreme poverty, with no possessions, and claimed to be seeking a single honest man. Legend has it that he impressed Alexander the Great.
He was also extremely disgusting. On the grounds that social conventions were wrong and should be ignored, he made a habit of pooping and peeing everywhere, in public. If someone insulted him, he did it on them. Furthermore, he engaged in public lewdness, and when criticized for this practice, he responded that he wished he could get rid of hunger by rubbing his stomach. When invited to a rich person’s house, he spat in his host’s mouth, for the sole purpose of being a jerk. Worst of all, he even – horror of horrors – ate breakfast in the marketplace. The ancient Greeks had… odd priorities.
Benjamin Franklin, Famous Politician, Inventor, and Womanizer
You definitely know who Benjamin Franklin was. A great Founding Father of the United States, he invented lightning and discovered bifocals. Or something like that.
He also liked sex, which is not unusual. However, he particularly recommended older women, for a whole list of reasons. In the first place, old women don’t get pregnant, they also have more practice and are therefore more skilled, and finally, because of gravity. Since bodily fluids flow downwards and fill up the legs, they get old and wrinkly last. Therefore, if you cover a woman’s head with a basket while doing the deed, it makes no difference how old she is. Some of those reasons are more sane than others.
He also wrote an essay entitled “Fart Proudly”, wherein he strongly recommended that the best scientists of the day immediately devote their time to developing a drug that would prevent farts from smelling. According to him, offensive-smelling farts were the foremost practical problem in science at the time. No other science was “worth a Fart-hing.” That’s right, Benjamin Franklin was guilty of unusually shameless womanizing, crude humour, and bad puns.
Julius Caesar was a Bald-Headed Adulterer, Invented the Combover
Julius Caesar: the one Roman that literally everyone can name. He conquered Europe for Rome, only to be betrayed by his own friends and murdered during a government session.
He was also, not unusually for a politician, a womanizer. However, he took it a few steps farther than most. In fact, his soldiers famously sang songs about his conquests, in both senses. When he had a triumphal entry into Rome, the soldiers warned the citizens “Lock up your wives, we are bringing you the bald-headed adulterer.” Whatever his morals, he was definitely bald-headed, which is why he invented the combover. (Really!) That’s also why he liked to wear laurel wreaths on his head: to conceal the baldness. He didn’t care too much about concealing the adultery.
However, he drew the line at being accused of affairs with men, which he was, frequently. Curio the Elder called him “Every woman’s man and every man’s woman.” Our old friend Suetonius, ancient Rome’s most notorious tabloid journalist, wrote about his soldiers singing “Caesar may have conquered the Gauls, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar.” The poet Catullus wrote poems about him having an affair with his chief engineer (heyo!), but later felt bad about it and apologized. Caesar immediately invited Catullus over for dinner, in a totally not-gay way.
Theodora, Professional Prostitute and Empress of Byzantium
Theodora was a powerful and influential 6th-century Byzantine empress. She was the wife of the emperor Justinian, and among many other accomplishments, supressed a large riot, worked for religious reform, and improved the rights of women. However, she didn’t get to be empress by being born into a high-class family; instead, she got Justinian to marry her by impressing him with her dancing, acting, and prostituting skills. Justinian’s aunt wasn’t a big fan of hers, but when she died, Justinian repealed the oddly specific law banning government officials from marrying actresses and made Theodora his empress.
According to the historian Procopius, who only published flattering things about her while he worked for her, she would have sex with dozens of men and also furniture. He also claimed that when she was an actress, she would put on the following show: she would appear on stage wearing nothing but a ribbon around her waist, and have trained geese eat grains of barley out of her *ahem*. That was what would draw a large audience and impress emperors back then. And people complain about the quality of television nowadays.
Before you appoint the goose-loving Theodora as patron saint of Waterloo, keep in mind that Procopius was the same guy who claimed that Justinian could magically send his own head flying away on secret missions, so it may not be strictly speaking true, but what’s the fun in that?
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