An archetypal exemplar of the corrupting power of Lust and Greed against Wisdom and Integrity! Thanks very much, Dan!
 | "Dia shábháil ar fad anseo!" |  | "God save all here!" |  |
……... .
……... .
Well, at least he didn’t behead them in the morning, like this guy did:
(From Wiki)
“Shahryar
Shahryar (also spelt Shahriar, Shariar, Shahriyar, Schahryar, Sheharyar, Shaheryar, Shahrayar, or Shaharyar; Persian: شهریار, romanized: Šahryār; derived from the Middle Persian: šahr-dār, ‘holder of a kingdom’, i.e. ‘prince, king’)[1] is the fictional Persian Sassanid King of kings who is told stories by his wife, Scheherazade.
He ruled over a Persian Empire extended to India, over all the adjacent islands and a great way beyond the Ganges as far as China, while Shahryār’s younger brother, Shahzaman (Persian: شاهزمان, Šāhzamān) ruled over Samarkand.
In the frame-story, Shahryar is betrayed by his wife, which makes him believe that all women will, in the end, betray him. So every night for three years, he takes a wife and has her executed the next morning, until he marries Scheherazade, his vizier’s beautiful and clever daughter. For 1001 nights in a row, Scheherazade tells Shahryar a story, each time stopping at dawn with a cliffhanger, thus forcing him to keep her alive for another day so that she can complete the tale the next night. After 1,001 stories she has told Shahryar, she tells him that she has no more stories to tell him. However, during the stories, Shahryar has grown into a wise ruler and rekindles his trust in women. “
"You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods."
I believe this advice, some time in the future, will be at the forefront of everyone's mind..
An archetypal exemplar of the corrupting power of Lust and Greed against Wisdom and Integrity! Thanks very much, Dan!
| "Dia shábháil ar fad anseo!" | | "God save all here!" | |
And all of Solomon’s wisdom went out the window....
Plaque at #30! Very beautiful. I have already stolen some paintings from your pages to put in my art files. Thank you.
Solomon, a tragic story. Going from great wisdom to great foolishness in just 40 years of rule.
As your wonderful poem points out, 700 wives and 300 concubines were no picnic. If he saw two per day, it’d be almost two years before he saw them again.
It was a near certainty they’d fool around behind his back. Perhaps Solomon was the biggest cuckold of all time.
But forsaking God when he was so close to Him at one time was the greatest foolishness of all.
I can only hope Ecclesiastes was his work of repentance before his early death at 60.
On the art side, I like Tissot’s work the best. He really showed the multiple races that were likely in his harem.