Casanova

The Oxford English dictionary describes the word Casanova as "a man who has sex with many women."

Before it became an English noun and made its way into the dictionary, it was the last name of Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, an Italian playboy of the 18th Century. His last name is a synonym for "womanizer" in most European languages.

He was born in Venice in 1725, and he considered the world's greatest seducer of all time.

At the time, Venice was the Las Vegas of Europe. People travelled to Venice from all over Europe in search of pleasure.

He was a lawyer, philosopher, writer, and musician, but he is most famous for his many love affairs.

He died single at 73, and, in his final years, he wrote The Story of My Life, his autobiography; and, in it, he narrates his steamy love life with hundreds of women - including nuns.

The Story of My Life is considered one of the best-written books of all time, and it is said to be the most authentic source of how life was like in Europe in the 18th Century.

Casanova had his first love affair when he was 11, with a 17-year-old lady called Bettina Gozzi; and he says that she ignited in him his life-long addition to women. Few women could resist him. In the book, he says it gave him great pleasure seeing a woman submit to his charm.

"The chief business of my life," he wrote, "has always been to indulge my senses. I believe I was born for women, and I never knew of anything of greater importance."

His relationships followed a familiar pattern. He looked for a rich or powerful woman who was experiencing problems in her marriage or relationship, found out what was missing from her life, and gave it to her.

"I adapted myself to the woman's ideals and brought her fantasies to life," he says in The Story of My Life. "I showed her admiration, gave her attention, and made her feel like she was the centre of the world."

He travelled throughout Europe to pursue pleasure, and he says his most memorable fling was with a French noblewoman called Henriette.

"They who do not believe that a woman is capable of making a man equally happy all the twenty-four hours of a day has never met Henriette," he writes. "The joy that flooded my soul was great when I conversed with her during the day, and it was still great when I held her in my arms during the night."

He had planned to settle down with Henriette but did not find her in their hotel room when he returned from a brief trip to Geneva. However, she left a small note for him. "Like all the others," it read, "you'll forget Henriette too." Beside it was a diamond ring he had given her.

She was wrong. Casanova never saw her again, but he never forgot her.

He says he never liked to hurt women. When he was ready to move on, he would find the woman a worthy lover to replace him.

In one instance, he hooked up one of his lovers, an Irish-descended woman called Marie-Louise O'Murphy, with King Louis XV of France; and she was his mistress for many years.

In his book, he remembers 120 women with whom he was romantically involved.

Casanova's life, however, was not only about romance. He was a gifted intellectual, and he did many other things. However, that's a story for another day.