pollution, the Greek concept of
pollution, the Greek concept ofSocieties create order by stigmatizing certain disorderly conditions and events and persons as ‘polluting’, that is, by treating them metaphorically as unclean and dangerous. Very roughly, the pollutions generally recognized by the Greeks were birth, death, to a limited degree sexual activity, homicide except in war, and sacrilege; certain diseases, madness above all, were also sometimes viewed in this way, while mythology abounds in instances of extreme pollutions such as incest, parricide, and cannibalism.
Different pollutions worked in different ways (local rules also varied). We get some indication of the attendant casuistry from, above all, a long code from Cyrene (Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 9. 72) and the rules of purity attached to certain Coan priesthoods (F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées des cités grecques (1969), nos. 154, 156). To give some...
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