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Pythagoras’ Greed Cup and Other Lesser-Known Ancient World Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 31, 2020 34 min

Roman Empire - Roman emperor — The assassination of Caligula. Quora

25. The First Whoopee Cushion?

Heliogabalus entering Rome in a chariot, escorted by 50 naked slaves. People Pill

Roman Emperor Heliogabalus (204- 222) was declared ruler of the empire when he was barely fourteen. Unsurprisingly, handing that kind of power to a teenager did not turn out well. While not as cruel as some of ancient Rome’s more monstrous rulers – he was no gratuitously cruel Caligula or Commodus – Heliogabalus did display the occasional mean streak.

That streak often showed in his practical jokes, which, considering that he was an emperor with none above him, always meant punching down. At the milder end of the teenaged emperor’s pranking was his propensity for seating some of his more pompous dinner guests on the ancient Roman version of whoopee cushions, that emitted farting noises when they parked their posterior. The crueler end of the spectrum, as seen below, was putting people in fear of their lives.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

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.