In Western culture, virginity these days means a lot less than it once did, particularly for women. Until not to long ago, sexual chastity was supposed to be the central concern of every woman until she started having kids in marriage, of course.
Female virgins have held a lot of power in Western cultural history, from the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome to the Virgin Mary and modern-day nuns, and girls were supposed to "hold onto" their virginity until they could lose it to a legal husband. Men, however, often weren't subject to the same idea, and that tends to show up in disparities between the experiences of male and female historical figures losing their virginities.
While the "purity myth," as Jessica Valenti called it in her book by the same name in , continues to have strength in American society and elsewhere, modern focuses on the loss of virginity tend to look at how it works psychologically , and what value people invest in it as young people.
The cultural trappings of virginity in the time of Catherine the Great, Napoleon, or even Edvard Munch were freighted with different feelings, from concern to desperation; but it's always been a momentous moment, no matter how famous the person who feels it.
Here are seven of some of the more notable ways historical figures reportedly lost their virginities. The head of the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar, earned himself some enemies while he climbed to power, which means that we can't be entirely sure whether the story of his loss of virginity is truth or gossip.
