Ha! an uncyclopedia is a wonderful notion. I see they have an article on Etymology, which I’m sorely tempted to expand. Very amusing take on the Byzantines. Mention of the Empress Theodora brought to mind that old gossip-monger Procopius, who as court historian dutifully toiled on the official history of Justinian and Theodora by day, while penning the scabrous Secret History by night.
(I can still remember reading the Secret History with delight as a young man and thinking that if Mr Carrick our classics master had used this as a set text his pupils’ proficiency in Greek would have soared like a lark on the wing.)
On the field of pleasure she (Theodora) was never defeated. Often she would go picnicking with ten young men or more, in the flower of their strength and virility, and dallied with them all, the whole night through. When they wearied of the sport, she would approach their servants, perhaps thirty in number, and fight a duel with each of these; and even thus found no allayment of her craving. Once, visiting the house of an illustrious gentleman, they say she mounted the projecting corner of her dining couch, pulled up the front of her dress, without a blush, and thus carelessly showed her wantonness. And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.
How the Earl of Rochester would have loved the court of Justinian and Theodora! His Mock Song would, on the evidence of the passage above, have suited her to a T!
“Were all my body larded o’er
With darts of love, so thick
That you might find in every pore
A well-stuck standing prick,
Whilst yet my eyes alone were free,
My heart would never doubt,
In amorous rage and ecstasy,
To wish those eyes, to wish those eyes fucked out.”
Edit: Link added for the complete Mock Song.
