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.
VIEW:
Miscellany
Around 1500 bc, the Hittite augur Maddunani sacrificed to the gods one goat kid, one piglet, and one puppy in an attempt to end an epidemic that had devastated the army. While puppies played “an extensive, and apparently vital” role in Hittite ritual, wrote historian Billie Jean Collins, “this is the only case in Hittite ritual of puppies being killed as an offering.”
What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?
—Ovid, c. 10Lapham’s
Daily
Stay Updated Subscribe to the LQ Newsletter
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