“James, I have known women who told me of dating men who showed inappropriate interest in their daughters. Also, one friend, as a teen, had a man who dated her mother express his interest in her. The affronted mother showed that pig the door. In light of your Trojan Whorse project and the Stillbirth of a Nation research you’ve done, I was wondering, did men of old stock multi-generational harems?”

-D.L.

Yes, and if they could today, they would. I do know one doctor, who was at a medical conference in Florida, who scored the temporary tri-fecta of harems by dating, in a single weekend, and in the following order: Mom [42], Daughter [20] and Grandma [60], and assured me that Grandma was the most fun.

This leads us moderns to think of the harem, harim or seraglio as a place of debauchery, nothing but sex stock for the tyrant. The nature, management and use of this section of the big man’s household varied depending on the culture, but generally reflected a single man’s ability to support more than one woman, in an age when many men could support none and often died young in war.

In the case of Genghis Khan, his 17 million descendents came from hundreds of wives and concubines. The wives were tokens of military alliance and would be inseminated with care, as each might produce a claimant for the throne and destabilize future dynasties. The concubines were sex slaves and probably took the brunt of the work load.

What we do not consider, is the importance of an organized household and of older women, who might range in function from meal-planning mother-in-law, to brothel madam.

Alexander, for instance, had at least two adopted mothers [a queen and the mother of the Great King] and at least one adopted sister, as it was his practice to adopt the family of the Asiatic royals he displaced. In a captive collection of women, it is possible that functions as varied as musician, dancer, storyteller, chef, masseuse, den mother, slave director, sex slave, child-bearing wife, midwife, fortune teller and beautician might be present.

Since the idea of the sex slave is as far as the modern mind reaches with this question, let’s consider how varied that job description could be. If I am a tyrant with a harem I will want enough women to serve my various proclivities, making my fantasy harem look like something of a Hennessy commercial. Next, you want to have spares that you do not use, that you can give to visiting dignitaries. Many men only like a single type of woman. In such cases, a variety of babes under the salacious silks of the big tent would represent a desire to provide peers and reward underlings from existing stocks without having to call up some scumbag slaver to procure a damsel for deflowering.

Among your sex slaves you would want some middle aged women [I suppose mother and daughter double sets could provide this stock] that could no longer bear children for those days when the conqueror in you scoffed at the sissy notion of coitus interuptus and you did not want to ruin the figure of one of your favorites with a child that your legitimate sons would have put to death after your funeral in any case.

For a somewhat more academic discussion of this subject consider reading Reay Tannahill’s, Sex in History, or The Ottomans by Andrew Wheatcroft.