In Hindu erotology, there are legends concerning magic devices for overcoming sterility.
King Brihadratha, ruler of Magadha, was sensual and libidinous. But his great regret was the lack of an heir. He therefore consulted a holy ascetic, a certain Candakaucika. The latter presented the king with a juicy mango that had just fallen from its tree. The mango was given to the king’s two wives. Each wife gave birth to half a child. The two parts, being brought together, thus produced a complete heir.
The Emperor Heliogabalus, according to the Historia Augusta, a Latin collection of the biographies of thirty Roman emperors, was notorious for his unsavory conduct: It was said that in one day he visited all the harlots in the circus, the theatre, the amphitheatre, and every spot in the city. He would cover his head with a muleteer’s hood, in order to avoid recognition. After bestowing on all the prostitutes pieces of gold, without consummating his lusts, he would add: Let nobody know that the Emperor gave you this.
The association of an Emperor and a harlot is described in the Latin collection of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta. The story concerns the Emperor Verus, who reigned in the second century A.D. At the instigation of a public harlot, he shaved off his beard while in Syria, an act that created much hostile talk in Syria itself.
In the same Historia Augusta, the wild performances of the Emperor Heliogabalus are retailed:
He usually coaxed his friends into a state of drunkenness and suddenly at night let loose among them lions, leopards, and bears. When they woke up in the same chamber as the animals, and found lions, bears, and leopards around them, in the morning, or, what was worse, at night, they died of fright.
The Emperor would buy up harlots from all the pimps and then set them free. He gathered together all the prostitutes from the circus, the theatre, the stadium, and from everywhere, and brought them into the public buildings, and delivered military harangues, as it were, calling them fellow-soldiers.