ancient history

 According to Herodotus "The Lydians have much the same usages as the Greeks, save for the prostitution of their daughters".  He may have been referring to a Babylonian practice in which every young woman had to offer herself just once at the temple to the highest bidder for her services. In another period the marriageable Persian women were put up for auction and the prices obtained for the most attractive ones went towards bonuses for the purchasers of the least endowed. Later still the Byzantines held so-called "bride shows" (beauty contests), notably to select wives for the Emperors and their sons.

Philip and Myrtale had met during their still youthful initiations into the Cabiric mysteries on the sacred Island of Samothrace and they were formally married in 357 BCE. When Philip heard about the birth of their son Alexander he renamed his wife Olympias because one of his horses had just won a race at Olympia. Queen Olympias, as she was thenceforth called, sometimes took to the hills to practice her wild Bacchic rites and taught her Macedonian maenads to have tame snakes around their shoulders and wear ivy crowns on their heads. At first Philip may have found all this stimulating but he soon came to dislike their marriage bed because of the snakes Olympias kept in it, and he then concentrated on his many other and less hazardous liaisons. 

    Although King Philip II had several children by his numerous wives and mistresses the only child with a putative historical line of descent to the present day appears to be Thessalonica (presumably so-called because her mother was a Thessalonian) who married the murderous Cassander.

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    The first six rulers of the incestuous Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt are putative ancestors of present day descendants through Cleopatra "Thea" whose third marriage was to Antiochus VII of the Seleucid dynasty in Syria

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How is your Jing in your Ding-dong Thing?

The Taoists believed that sex was the way to achieve good health and immortality. Yang referred to the male gender while yin referred to the female gender. In order for men and women to give each other their yin and yang essences, sex was very important and the different sexual positions had different purposes. The taoists believed that men should ejaculate as little as possible to maintain a high level of jing, or sexual energy, as semen was believed to be rich in jing..