Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.
Demons of Illness and Poverty Stalking the Lucky Gods, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1884. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Herbert R. Cole Collection.
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Miscellany
According to Thucydides, before the plague of Athens, the Athenians were divided over whether the disaster predicted by an oracle would be a limos (famine) or a loimos (plague). “In the case of unwritten prophecies,” wrote one classicist, “it would be impossible to determine which word the speaker meant to use. The ambiguity of the sound would have been its chief recommendation to the soothsayer.”
Disease is not of the body but of the place.
—Latin proverbLapham’sDaily
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Roundtable
Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus
But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More
The World in Time
Robert D. Kaplan
Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More