Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion

by Robert C.T. Parker

Most of the commonly read Greek texts address "pollution". The pollution theme appears in tragedies, historical texts, and political oratory. Purity is a constant concern in ritual texts, and Greeks underwent many small purifications in their everyday lives. Certain archaic religious movements even made "purification" the path to felicity in the afterlife. First published in 1983, Miasma is the first work in English to treat this theme in detail.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality, Philosophy, Sociology

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Robert has been Wykeham Professor of Ancient (Greek) History since 1996. Before that he was Tutor in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at Oriel College, Oxford; before that, an undergraduate and graduate at New College. He gave the Towsend lectures in Cornell in 2008 and the Sather lectures in Berkeley in 2013.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

fine book, like White's "Myths of the Dog-Man" and it's chapter on contagion fills in a lot of gaps.
it seems that pollution engenders/creates or at least awakens spirits of a liminal nature. Transgression gives itself a spirit and a reaction of the two or however many other spirits who have been infringed upon.
Pollution was the centerpiece idea of greek religion and drama and purification was as equally important and extending into greek medecine it is easy to see these ideas transform into gnostic and christian thought.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parker looks at the Greek belief not only did certain acts (dying, being born, violating sacred land) pollute the doer physically and spiritually but this person's presence could spread the pollution to everyone around him unless eventually purified (he points out the idea of shunning someone is hardly unique to Greece). This proves a tricky subject to analyze as the rules are rarely spelled out clearly; miasma (pollution) for example has a lot of overlap with enages (marked by the gods for punishment) but they're two separate things. And the concept of what pollutes and how changed a lot over time (“The overtones of polluting an entire community were different when you’re talking about a city of 30,000 rather than a small village.”). Very good if you're into this topic.

[Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

The scholarship in this book is good, as far as I can tell as an interested non-Classicist. However, the amount of unnecessary authorial editorializing is a bit difficult to deal with.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a masterpiece of classical scholarship.