Art, obsession, and identity
Cleopatra and Mark Antony are arguably the most famous lovers in history. But Julius Caesar got there first, coaxed by the Egyptian queen into sleeping with her so that he might save her from her scheming brother. She bore Caesar a son before the Roman dictator was assassinated. Enter Mark Antony, whom she promptly seduced in a ploy to get the handsome Roman general help her cling to power. The lady Pharaoh bore him twins before the whole affair started to slide south. Antony was defeated in battle and died of a self-inflicted wound in Cleopatra's arms. Grief stricken, she also took her own life, with poison. Thus ended the reign of the pharaohs as Rome became the new world superpower.
In 1155 BCE, the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses III was assassinated in a plot instigated by one of his wives, Tiye, who hoped to put her son Pentawer on the throne instead of the pharaoh's chosen successor, Ramesses IV. The plan ultimately failed, but not before Rameses IV commissioned 12 judges to investigate the murder. During the subsequent trial, numerous court officials and concubines were implicated in the plot. Proceedings were then interrupted by a sex scandal involving three of the magistrates, all of whom had been seduced by women linked to the conspiracy. The hapless trio had their ears and noses cut off for cavorting with the accused women. In all, 28 people were executed for their part in the conspiracy. The fate of Queen Tiye is not recorded.
In Rome during the reign of Tiberius, a nobleman named Decius Mundus was infatuated with a married women called Paulina. She resisted all his advances, come-ons that included an attempted monetary bribe. Knowing that Paulina was a devotee of the Egyptian gods, Mundus instead bribed the priests of Isis to tell her that Anubis, a jackal-headed deity, wished to appear to her. That night she entered the temple and submitted to the needs of whom she thought was Anubis. Imagine her horror when she later realized that is was Decius disguised as the canine-headed god who'd met her in the darkness. Paulina complained to the emperor, who ordered the priests' execution and had the temple torched. Deceitful Decius, however, was only exiled.
According to the ancient Chinese chronicle Zuo Zhuan, or 'The Commentary of Zuo,' the seventh-century noblewoman Xia Ji, whose father was overlord of Zheng state, thoroughly enjoyed the company of men. Three of her conquests, an official named Lord Ling of Chen and two of his ministers, got a kick out of wearing her underwear and bragged about it, which enraged Xia Ji's son, Xia Zengshu. One night at a drunken party, Ling joked about Xia Zengshu's paternity, and was promptly murdered for the insult by the younger man. Ling's two underlings escaped and fled to the safety of the rival state of Chu, ruled by King Zhuang. After executing Xia Zengshu for his crime, King Zhuang then invaded Chen, thus becoming the only winner in this sordid tale of sin and sex.
Queen Dowager Zhao, the mother of Qin Shi Huang, who would later become the first emperor of China, was the concubine of politician Lu Buwei. Access to her was restricted, which often meant Lu Buwei was unable to sneak into the royal chamber for a "quickie." Dissatisfied, the queen ordered Lu Buwei to seek a solution. Not wishing to displease her—and facing possible exposure and persecution—the minister came up with a bizarre solution. He disguised a well-endowed youth named Lao Ai as a eunuch. As a 'castrated' male, Lao Ai was free to enter the women's quarters without suspicion, where he serviced the queen until the ruse was discovered. Lao Ai was executed for his sins, the disgraced queen imprisoned, and her children, conceived with Lao Ai, murdered.
Roman general and statesman Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of the richest and most powerful figures in Rome. But Crassus nearly fell on his sword after being accused of criminal intimacy with a Vestal Virgin. The Vestals were priestesses bound by an oath of celibacy for 30 years and were not to be touched! What made matters worse was that the virgin in question, Licinia, just happened to be Crassus' cousin, a fact further coloring the charge sheet. Crassus escaped prosecution after informing the court that the only reason he hung out with Licinia was because she owned a plush villa, a property he desperately wanted to purchase. His accusers bought the story, absolving the general and freeing the Vestal.
Elagabalus was still a teenager when he became emperor of Rome. But his relative immaturity belied a seasoned disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos. He married four women, slept with countless others (including a Vestal Virgin), and numbered male courtiers among his many lovers. He was also rumored to have prostituted himself, wore makeup and wigs, and preferred to be called a lady and not a lord. And all this before his 18th birthday! Elagabalus' fall from grace was spectacular, assassinated along with his mother by members of the Praetorian Guard to be replaced by a cousin, Severus Alexander.
Caligula gleefully embraced sexual perversity as a given. Emperor of Rome from 37 to 41, his reign was marked by cruelty, sadism, and extravagance. He regularly slept with his three sisters—Agrippina the Younger, Drusilla, and Livilla—and lent them out to other men. His many salacious escapades included numerous liaisons with male and female lovers, with the Roman historians Suetonius and Cassius Dio adding that the tyrant even tried to turn his palace into a brothel. Caligula died a violent death, assassinated by officers of the Praetorian Guard.
The Tour de Nesle Affair was a scandal amongst the French royal family in 1314 centered on an adulterous affair involving the three daughters-in-law of the French King Philip IV. Named for the Tour de Nesle, a tower in Paris where much of the hanky-panky was said to have occurred, the three married princesses were discovered cavorting with two Norman knights, who were found to be in the possession of the embroidered purses presented to the women as gifts by King Philip's daughter, Isabella—wife of King Edward II and Queen of England. Isabella concluded that the knights must have been carrying on an illicit affair with the three women and had the men-at-arms tortured until they confessed. At their trial, two of the princesses were found guilty of adultery and sentenced to life imprisonment. The knights, meanwhile, were executed. Pictured: Philip IV of France (center) and his family
One famous sex scandal of the 12th century involved a young philosopher, Abelard, and his teenage classics and philosophy student Héloise. Infatuated with his young charge, Abelard, a leading logician and theologian, began stalking the student. An illicit relationship ensued, much to the horror of the girl's uncle, Fulbert, a church official (as a young woman, Héloise would have been forbidden from fraternizing with the male students at university). Their troubles became worse when Héloise became pregnant. To avoid more scandal, the couple was secretly married in Paris, though the union was known to Fulbert. In time, however, the marriage became public knowledge. Fearing shame and retribution, Abelard surreptitiously banished Héloise to a convent. Fulbert, believing his niece had been abandoned by her husband, hired a gang of thugs to attack and castrate him. Héloise eventually became a nun, then prioress, and then abbess—the only option left open to her after the cutting short of her promising academic career.
British statesman Lord Palmerston, who was twice Britain's prime minister during the 19th century, was a notorious womanizer. And his scandal-filled love life and sexual predilections extended to seeking out young socialites. In one visit to Windsor Castle in 1839, the lusty lord, then aged 55, is said to have tried to creep into the bedroom of one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting, 22-year-old Susan Brand. At the time of the incident, Palmerston was engaged to Emily Cawper. By all accounts the monarch despised Palmerston, both for his policies and his unscrupulous behavior.
In 1885, Oscar Wilde initiated a private prosecution against the Marquess of Queensberry for libel, after Queensbury publicly accused the Irish poet and playwright of sodomy. The subsequent trial became a cause célèbre as salacious details of Wilde's private life with Alfred Taylor and Lord Alfred Douglas began to appear in the press. Queensbury was eventually acquitted, but Wilde was then arrested and put on trial for gross indecency with men. Found guilty, he was jailed from 1895 to 1897. Wilde, celebrated as one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London, spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900, and is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
The 18th-century French nobleman and politician Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade is synonymous with systematic sexual depravity. As a writer, he is best known for his rabid erotic works of fiction, which inspired the term sadism for sexual cruelty. Sade lived a scandalous libertine existence, his sexual infamy enough to put him under police surveillance. Imprisoned several times and escaping the death sentence on more than one occasion, Sade was declared insane in 1803 and spent his final years in solitary confinement at Charenton lunatic asylum.
The arrest in 1916 of diplomat and Irish nationalist Roger Casement during the First World War after he was accused of attempting to gain German military aid for the Easter Rising led to excerpts from his private journals, know as the 'Black Diaries,' being published before his trial for high treason. The notebooks detailed his many homosexual activities, acts that were illegal at the time. The material was widely circulated and undermined support for clemency once Casement was condemned to death. He was executed on August 3, 1916.
He was one of the most famous film stars of the silent movie era. Yet Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle ended up center stage in one of Hollywood's most infamous scandals. Accused of the sexual assault and manslaughter of a young actress during a party, Arbuckle was tried three times for the alleged crime before finally being absolved of any blame and acquitted in 1922. But the damage was done. Arbuckle only worked sparingly throughout the rest of the decade, his popularity having waned considerably. Broken and exhausted, he died in his sleep of a heart attack in 1933, aged 46.
Before he became Hollywood's "Latin Lover," Italian silent movie star Rudolph Valentino earned a living as a taxi dancer (hired dancers paid to dance with customers) in a New York cabaret. Almost certainly additional service as a gigolo would have been demanded, and Valentino effectively became a male escort. He befriended a Chilean socialite called Blanca de Saulles, who was unhappily married to businessman John de Saulles. The couple later divorced, with Valentino supporting Blanca de Saulles' claims of infidelity on her husband's part. Mr. de Saulles was livid and through dubious underground connections had Valentino arrested on a trumped-up vice charge. Initially jailed, the dancer then endured a well-publicized trial and, while eventually acquitted, the subsequent scandal seriously harmed his reputation as a society figure. And in a twist worthy of Hollywood itself, Blanca de Saulles fatally shot dead her ex-husband during a custody dispute over their son. Fearing further salacious publicity, Valentino fled to Los Angeles, where he found worldwide stardom.
Singer-songwriter and pianist Jerry Lee Lewis has been described as one of the pioneers of rock and roll and rockabilly music. He's been married seven times, including a technically bigamous one to his second wife, 23 days before the divorce from his first wife had been finalized. But it was his 1957 third marriage to 13-year-old Myra Gale Brown, his first cousin once removed, that truly rocked the moral high ground. It was a relationship that pretty much destroyed Lewis' career. Williams and Lewis eventually divorced in 1970.
One of the biggest scandals to stain the British establishment began in 1961 when Conservative politician John Profumo, the secretary of state for war, embarked on an extramarital affair with 19-year-old model and alleged call girl Christine Keeler (pictured) who at the same time was involved with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché. Ivanov was a friend of osteopath Stephen Ward, who knew Keeler and her friend, Mandy Rice-Davis, another alleged prostitute. When allegations of Profumo's dalliance surfaced, he denied everything, even lying about the affair to Parliament. Evidence to the contrary quickly became too great to hide, however, and with national security at stake, Profumo was forced to resign in 1963. The scandal contributed to the defeat of the Conservative government a year later. Stephen Ward, meanwhile, was arrested and ended up in court accused of living off immoral earnings (money obtained from Rice-Davies and Keeler, among others). He was found guilty of being Keeler's pimp, but took an overdose of sleeping pills before the verdict was announced. He died shortly afterwards.
Despite having been originally published in Italy in 1929, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' by English author D.H. Lawrence (pictured) became the subject of an obscenity trial in Britain in 1960 after Penguin Books sought to publish the novel. The book describes the explicit affair between Lady Chatterley and her working-class gamekeeper. The sexual scenes are described in detail, and were considered shocking by the British establishment at the time. The strong language used throughout was also a matter of contention. Ultimately the jury at the Old Bailey found 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' to be "not guilty" of obscenity. Published a month later, all 200,000 copies were sold on the first day.
Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll was the central figure of a sex scandal that shocked 1960s Britain. During her much-publicized 1963 divorce from her second husband, Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, polaroid photographs were produced as evidence of adultery by the duke that showed her naked in the presence of several men. Furthermore, a list was produced by the prosecution that numbered as many as 88 men with whom the duke believed his wife had consorted with. One of those listed was alleged to be the American actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., then married. Fairbanks always denied any association with the duchess. The case became a tabloid sensation. While granting the divorce, the judge said of Margaret Campbell that she "was a completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied with a number of men." She never remarried and lost much of her fortune in later life. She died aged 80 in 1993.
The 1970's British political and sex scandal known as the Thorpe Affair ended the career of Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the Liberal Party. In 1971, a man called Norman Scott maintained that in the early 1960s he had been in a sexual relationship with Thorpe. The allegation surfaced again in the mid-1970s. Attempts to silence Scott failed, and in 1975 he survived being shot after the gunman's pistol jammed. The following year Scott's claims of a sexual liaison with Thorpe were published. After resigning his position as party leader, Thorpe stood trial on charges of inciting and conspiring to murder Scott. He was ultimately acquitted of the charges, but his reputation lay in tatters. Thorpe is pictured leaving court after the "not guilty" verdict.
In February 1988, popular American Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart appeared on live television and tearfully confessed in front of 7,000 worshipers at his World Faith Center in Baton Rouge that he had "sinned" by apparently committing adultery. He asked his family and his congregation for forgiveness before stepping down from the pulpit for ''an indeterminate time.'' Despite his tearful on-air apology, Swaggart was defrocked by the Assemblies of God in April. In October 1991, police in Indio, California, found Swaggart in the company of a prostitute after stopping him for a traffic violation.
The arrest of British actor Hugh Grant on June 27, 1995 after soliciting the services of sex worker Divine Brown on the corner of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles became one of the most talked about celebrity sex scandals of the 1990s. Charged with engaging in lewd conduct with Brown, Grant, who at the time was in a relationship with actress Elizabeth Hurley, pleaded no contest, was fined, and placed on two years' summary probation. A couple of weeks later in one of the greatest celebrity mea culpas in recent history, Grant appeared on 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' and admitted that what he did was a "bad thing."
On May 14, 2011, Nafissatou Diallo, a 32-year-old maid at the Sofitel New York Hotel, alleged that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the powerful head of the International Monetary Fund, had sexually and violently assaulted her after she entered his suite. Despite being accused of four felony charges supported by compelling DNA evidence, Strauss-Kahn was eventually acquitted. He later settled a civil suit brought by Diallo for an undisclosed sum. In 2015, Strauss-Kahn was again acquitted, this time of charges of "aggravated pimping" at the Carlton hotel in Lille, France.
Actor Rob Lowe's steamy encounter with a then-16-year-old Atlanta girl, identified as Lena Jan Parsons (known as Jan), and her 23-year-old friend, Tara Seburt, on the night of July 17, 1988 was videotaped apparently with the consent of all concerned. The grainy footage was leaked soon afterwards. Lowe maintained he didn’t know that Jan was underage. He ultimately settled a lawsuit with her family and was not charged with a crime. After enduring a slump in popularity in the wake of the scandal, Lowe's career rebounded.
In what the media dubbed as the "Camillagate tape," a transcript of a bedtime conversation between the then-Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles recorded in 1989 shook the British royal family to its very foundations. The recording was made while Charles was still married to Diana, Princess of Wales and Camilla to Andrew Parker Bowles. The tape effectively exposed the relationship between Charles and Camilla. Diana, meanwhile, had embarked on an extramarital affair with British military officer James Hewitt. Pictured are Lady Diana Spencer and Camilla Parker Bowles in 1980.
In 2017, details began to emerge of dozens of criminal sexual acts allegedly committed by Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein on dozens of women. Over 80 women in the film industry, among them A-list celebrities, eventually accused Weinstein of sexual assault and sexual abuse over a period of at least 30 years. In March 2020, the former movie mogul was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment. The scandal triggered many similar allegations against powerful men around the world, and led to the ousting of many of them from their positions.
Sources: (NPR) (Smithsonian Magazine) (USA Today) (Tatler) (Vanity Fair) (Los Angeles Times) (The Mirror) (The Independent)
Canduales, the degenerate king of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia in what is now western Turkey, one day asked his bodyguard, Gyges, if he wanted to see his wife naked. Gyges declined but was eventually persuaded by the kinky monarch to hide in her chamber and watch as the queen undressed. Unfortunately, she spotted Gyges and learning of her husband's betrayal of trust gave the sheepish bodyguard a choice: kill Canduales and marry her, or she would publicly accuse Gyges of spying on her, a crime punishable by immediate execution. When the queen summoned her husband to bed later that night, Gyges was waiting and stabbed Canduales to death.
Former President Donald Trump has long been among the ranks of the accused. During his 2016 presidential campaign, adult film star Stormy Daniels came forward with the claim that she and Trump had engaged in an affair, and that he had paid her US$130,000 in hush money to keep quiet about it. The money was given to her by Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Cohen was later reimbursed by the Trump Organization and the payment was recorded as a legal expense. This is what takes his alleged actions from a moral issue to a criminal one, as this would amount to business fraud.
On March 30 2023, after years of investigation, it was announced that Trump has been indicted on more than 30 charges. This makes him the first former or current president in US history to be indicted on criminal charges.
Hippias and Hipparchus were the so-called tyrants of Athens, two brothers who terrorized the Greek city in 528 BCE. Hipparchus had a crush on a handsome young man named Harmodius (left). Trouble was, Harmodius was already in a relationship with a man named Aristogeiton (right). Frightened and intimidated by Hipparchus' unwanted advances, both Harmodius and Aristogeiton decided to do away with their oppressor. During the crowded Panathenaea festival, the pair attacked Hipparchus and stabbed him to death. The tyrant's guards quickly subdued the two heroic lovers, killing them both. The Athenians later erected a statue of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, honoring their blow against tyranny (pictured).
There's nothing like a juicy sex scandal to get tongues wagging and the gossip going. And the more salacious and sensational, the better it seems. Sex scandals have shocked the world since antiquity. Interlaced with murder, conspiracy, and numerous executions, some of these ancient dalliances helped define human history. In the modern age, a sex scandal is often linked with political intrigue and celebrity culture, with all the lurid details eagerly exposed by an insatiable tabloid press. So, who's been named and shamed—and sometimes wrongly accused—of shameful sexual foibles over the centuries?
Click through and read up on some of history's most shocking and salacious sex scandals.
History's most salacious sex scandals
Shocking trysts of the ages
LIFESTYLE Gossip
There's nothing like a juicy sex scandal to get tongues wagging and the gossip going. And the more salacious and sensational, the better it seems. Sex scandals have shocked the world since antiquity. Interlaced with murder, conspiracy, and numerous executions, some of these ancient dalliances helped define human history. In the modern age, a sex scandal is often linked with political intrigue and celebrity culture, with all the lurid details eagerly exposed by an insatiable tabloid press. So, who's been named and shamed—and sometimes wrongly accused—of shameful sexual foibles over the centuries?
Click through and read up on some of history's most shocking and salacious sex scandals.