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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 2491925, member: 76194&quot;]A lot of things can be said about the life of Sassanian King Kavadh I. He was a skilled warrior who gave the Eastern Romans a much deserved whooping in the Anastasian Wars, he had more lives than a cat and managed to escape with his life despite being imprisoned and condemned to death by his nobles on multiple occasions, and he was a religious reformer. But perhaps the most interesting way to remember this King of Kings&nbsp; by retelling the incident of &quot;compulsory wife-sharing&quot; that cost him his crown and almost cost him his life yet again. He left future rulers with a sound lesson that if you want to stay in power, forcing your nobles to share their wives with cult members for a night of &quot;free love&quot; is not a sound policy to adopt.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]527483[/ATTACH]</p><p>Kavadh I, AD 499-531</p><p>AR Drachm, 28mm, 4.1g, 10h</p><p>Obv.: &quot;Kava (may he) prosper&quot; in Pahlavi (crude), with letter base inward; crowned and cuirassed bust right, crescents on shoulders, stars flanking crown.</p><p>Rev.: Fire altar with attendants; star and crescent flanking flames, date in outer left field; mint in outer right field.</p><p>Reference: cf. MACW 1012-16.</p><p><br /></p><p>For some reason this king, who never had an easy reign, decided to embrace a communistic sect founded by Mazdak the Younger, a Zoroastrian prophet and religious reformer. In an ancient version of Communism, Mazdak&#039;s sect required it&#039;s followers to embrace pacifism, vegetarianism, communal wealth sharing, free love, and social reform. Normally the nobles might have been all too happy to ignore a small sect of ancient hippie oddballs, but when the king himself embraced pacifism, wealth sharing, and free love, you better believe the nobles were going to get nervous and start plotting.</p><p><br /></p><p>Things came to a boiling point when Kavadh I ordered his nobles to hand over their wives to the sex crazed cultists so that they could share &quot;free love&quot; with them. Apparently the nobles were not impressed with the idea of handing their wives to strangers for adult recreational activities. Kavadh I found himself immediately imprisoned in a place called &quot;The Castle of Oblivion.&quot; Although the exact location is lost to history, I think it is safe to assume any place called &quot;The Castle of Oblivion&quot; is not a vacation resort.</p><p><br /></p><p>So there was Kavadh I, his brother put on the throne in his place, and awaiting execution yet again. And somehow the man manages to escape , create an army, and fight his way back to the throne. And he learned his lesson too, no more &quot;free love&quot; demands, or any other hippie ideology. He outlawed the communistic sect of Mazdak the Younger, and executed Mazdak.</p><p><br /></p><p>And the moral of the story is, unless you want to see your throne evaporate from under you in the blink of an eye, don&#039;t force your nobles to hand over their wives to a mob of sex obsessed cult members.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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