Gluttony from The Seven Deadly Sins, by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, c. 1550. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Frederic R. Coudert Jr., in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh A. Murray, 1957.

Scandal

Volume XIII, Number 2 | spring 2020

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The Laughing Audience (detail), by William Hogarth, 1733. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932.

Preamble

Hidden Agendas

By Ron Rosenbaum

On the timeless fascination with scandal and lessons from a career covering tabloid news.

More

The Cleopatra’s Nose of 1914

By Jack Beatty

The story of the Caillaux affair—a murdered newspaper editor, a web of adultery, and the road to World War I.

More

Map

When You Gotta Go

Places to lie low after causing a scandal.

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Miscellany

Greek dramatist Aristophanes, in the 423 bc comedy The Clouds, coined the term rhaphanidosis, “the humiliating act of thrusting a radish up the anus as a punishment for adultery.”

1873 | Hartford, CT

Opinion Page

Mark Twain would like a little less freedom in his press.More

1813 | Derbyshire

Wretched, Wretched Mistake

Jane Austen sets off a family freak-out.More

c. 600 BC | Greece

Aesop’s Nextdoor

Would you be their neighbor?More

Charts & Graphs

Evolution of Gossip

From apes to Twitter.

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Black and white photograph of French writer and feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

Engraving of Greek satirist Lucian.

Portrait bust of Roman poet Virgil.

French author Émile Zola.

Sepia colored photo of Oscar Wilde sitting on a rock with a book in his hand

Scandal begins where the police leave off.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

Portrait of third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson & the Parliament of Singapore

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

More

Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

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

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