Men Considered Evil in World's History

So I decided to do some research on evil men in history. Because watching movies and tv shows and reading books about human cruelty and torture in the media, makes such things seem...unreal. I mean did men really do that? Can men really be so cruel?

I admit that I am perhaps naive, but I've never really encountered such evil men in my daily life that could torture helpless people as punishment or to teach a lesson. In my small world, men don't do that. Men are kind and caring and wouldn't harm a hair on another soul for their own pleasure.

Well, according to other people's research on documents and such, they did exist.

Here's some categories I put them in (this is only a small number of men...)

EVIL LEADERS OF THE BIBLE:

            Pharaoh (Exodus 1-12) (hard-hearted king)

            Nimrod (Gen. 10:8, 9; 1 Chronicles 1:10) (Godless tyrant empire builder)

            King Ahab (1 Kings 16:30-33) (Worst of Israel’s Kings)

            Belshazzar (Daniel 5:2-31) (Sacrilegious King)

            Herod (Matt. 2:1-6, 16) (Paranoid King)

            Felix (Acts 24:24, 25) (Procrastinating Governor)

            Caiaphas (John 11:49-53) (renegade high priest)

EVIL MEN OF THE BIBLE

            Achan (Josh 7:1, 19-21) (The Carnal-minded soldier)

            Absalom (2 Samuel 15:7-14) (Disobedient son)

            Cain (Gen. 4:3-12) (way that leads to death)

EVIL MEN IN HISTORY (before 18^th century)

            Attila (Khan of the Huns from the year 434 till his death in 453) (Leader of Hunnic Empire, stretching from Germany to Ural River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea). (He is remembered as the epitome of cruelty and rapacity.) (An unsuccessful campaign in Persia was followed in 441 by an invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire, the success of which emboldened Attila to invade the West. He passed unhindered through Australia and Germany, across the Rhine and Gaul, plundering and devastating all in his path with a ferocity unparalleled in the records of barbarian invasions and compelling those he overcame to augemnt his mighty army.) (He drowned in his own blood on his wedding night.)

            Vlad III of Romania (a.k.a Vlad the Impaler) (reigned during 1448 and 1478) (A method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim’s legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was not taken that the stake not be too sharp, else the victim might die too rapidly from shock.) (Other methods of cruelty: nails in heads, cutting off limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs – especially of women, scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to animals, and boiling alive.)

            Ivan IV of Russia (a.k.a. Ivan the Terrible) (ruled from 1533 to 1547) (Believing that the elite city of Novgorod planned to defect to Poland, he led an army to stop them and built walls around the perimeter of the city in order to prevent the people from escaping. Between 500-1000 people were gathered every day by the troops to be tortured and killed in front of Ivan and his son.) (In 1581, he beat his pregnant daughter-in-law for wearing immodest clothing and causing a miscarriage. His son got into a heated argument with his father, resulting in Ivan striking his son in the head with his pointed staff causing his son’s accidental death.)

All right, now you're wondering why I looked this all up, right? Well, to be truthful I looked it up for inspiration in my "Remmington Pirates Series." I want to be realistic, if I'm going to have evil villians in my story I want to know and understand them.

At any rate, "Common Question 2" that I get asked is coming soon! ;P