Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Eros

Volume II, Number 1 | winter 2009

Purchase

The Toilette of Venus, by François Boucher, 1751.

Preamble

Transits of Venus

By Lewis H. Lapham

The commodification of sex and love has shaped our attitudes toward both over the past half century, but eros is more than just dollars and cents.

More

Empress Theodora and retinue, mosaic panel from the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy, sixth century.

Affairs of State

By William Rosen

How the improbable marriage of an actress, courtesan, and daughter of an animal trainer to a Byzantine emperor dramatically changed the course of European history.

More

Map

The Grand Tour

Sexual hazards from around the world and throughout time.

View

1935 | Watts

Deciding to Wait

Charles Mingus takes it slow. More

23 BC | Rome

Winter Moon

Horace’s ode to an aging woman.More

c. 1250 | Konya

Not Like This Before

Like this. More

Charts & Graphs

A Kingdom for a Kiss

Sex and politics throughout history.

View

American writer Philip Roth.

French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault.

French novelist Gustave Flaubert.

Japanese diarist and poet Sei Shōnagon.

Photograph of Charles Baudelaire

Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Frontispiece for 1612-13 King James Bible.

Black and white photograph of English poet and librarian Philip Larkin.

One may like the love and despise the lover.

—George Farquhar, 1706

Molière & Albert Camus

Purchase

Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Walk on the Wild Side

By Virginia Woolf

On the lives passing through Kew Gardens on a summer day. More

DÉjÀ Vu

Dance Stance Revolution

2022:

Brazilian blocos ignore ban on Carnival celebrations.

1576:

Italian plague patients ignore ban on dance parties.

More

The World in Time

Olivier Zunz

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville. More

play
pause

00:00

00:00