By Robert Parker
Someone who has sampled even a number of the most typically learn Greek texts could have encountered pollutants. The pollutants of bloodshed is a common subject of tragedy: Orestes is pushed mad; Oedipus brings plague upon all Thebes. In historic texts we discover towns intervening within the inner affairs of others to `drive out the pollution', or making conflict as a result of it. Political orators symbolize their competitors as polluting demons. Purity is a continuing quandary in ritual texts, and any Greek underwent many small purifications in his lifestyle. definite irregular non secular events of the archaic age made `purification' the trail to felicity within the afterlife. First released in hardback in 1983, Miasma is the 1st paintings in English to regard this topic intimately.
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Additional resources for Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion
Sample text
51 L ogically th ere is a p o ten tial tension betw en corruptio optimi pessima an d corruptio optimum non attingit. Z o ro astrian s an d H in d u s th u s arriv e a t opposite conclusions as to w h e th e r the d e a th o f a person o f high o r low sta tu s pollutes m ore (Zoroastrians: The Zend Avesta, p a r t 1, The Vendidad, trans. J . D arm esteter, O xford, 1880, F arg ard 5, §6, 27—38; H in d u s: S. J . T a m b ia h in J . ), The Character o f Kinship, C am bridge, 1 9 7 3 ,2 0 9 -1 2 ).
V. 731. N o t even C reon is ever allowed to use the word ‘traito r' of Polyneices. F o r a different view see C erri, op. , and S. Fuscagni in M . ). Religione e politica nel mondo antico, M ilan, 1981, 6 4 -7 2 . In M oschion’s Pheraioi, by c o n tra st, the rig h t o f b u rial w as perhaps vindicated even for a tyrant: see C Q 31 ( 1981 ), 417. 57 O n b irth -p o llu tio n see M oulinier, 6 6 -7 0 , G inouvès, 2 3 5 -8 , W ächter, 2 5 -3 6 . 7. 59 W . H . R oscher, ‘D ie T esserak o n tad en und T esserakontadenlehre der G riechen u n d a n d e re r V ö lk er’, Ber.
7, m others of L e u c tra d e a d th ro n g in g sh rin es in thanksgiving. ) Epist. 2. 44 Miasma Birth and Death sh a k e a b le law s o f the gods’ in insisting th a t even the body o f an en e m y sh o u ld be given u p after b attle for burial. 44 An un b u ried corpse was an o u tra g e , a n d o n e possible consequence was pollution. Sopho cles, in th e Antigone, as we have seen, offered a rem arkable vision o f th e form th a t this pollution took :45 scraps of the corpse, d ro p p e d by birds o f prey on the altars, doused the sacrificial fires, a n d do o m ed th e city to godlessness.