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16 of History’s Lesser Known Dark Moments That Will Give you Chills

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Tiberius. Wikimedia

History’s Dirtiest Old Man

Being a presentable youth in the presence of Roman emperor Tiberius’ (42 BC – 37 AD) was probably pretty nightmarish. While not as well known as notoriously debauched Roman emperors such as Caligula, Nero, and Heliogabalus, Tiberius matched and likely exceeded them in perversion. Unlike them, he just preferred to be a pervert in privacy and seclusion.

Tiberius built himself a vast perverted pleasure palace, secluded in the island of Capri, where he wallowed in all kinds of sexual perversion, but particularly pedophilia, with children of both sexes. Among other things, he had toddlers trained to dive under water while he was in a pool to “nibble” at him as he swam – he called them his “minnows”.

He also had pleasure gardens stocked with teenaged and prepubescent boys and girls, dressed in outfits from Greco-Roman myths and legends, or running around naked. Tiberius had them frolic about, display themselves for his pleasure, and engage in sex on command with each other – as he aged, he grew increasingly impotent, and so was often reduced to being a spectator in the perversions acted out for his pleasure.

He even had anal experts on the imperial payroll: “On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions.” To top it off, he got blowjobs from babies: “Unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction.”

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A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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