Miasma and Asebeia Flashcards
For women after giving birth, suffering a still birth, loss of a foetus or abortion.
Sacred Law from Cyrene: the woman who gives birth pollutes the house. She pollutes anyone within the house, but she does not pollute anyone outside the house, unless he comes inside
Common purification rituals after birth
sprinkling the mother with sacred water, bathing her in the sea or drenching her with the blood of a piglet, and burning the incense or sulfur
through not honouring the gods in the right manner on the right days
the sacred calendars from Erchia and Thorikos are very specific about what animals should be sacrificed, to what god and on what days. The suggestion here is that if this is not done exactly as the calendar specifies, this would be punishable
through being physically dirty
“Never from dawn forward, pour a shining libation of wine to Zeus or to the other immortals, without washing your hands first. When you do, they do not hear your prayers; they spit them back at you.” - Hesiod Works and Days
Through murder
In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, the city of Thebes is punished by the gods with plague. This was because they had a murderer living in their midst who had not been properly purified. It turns out Oedipus had unknowingly murdered the king of Thebes many years earlier, and then gone to claim kingship himself.
By entering the home of a woman who had just given birth
Sacred Law of Cyrene: Any person who is inside will be defiled for three days, but he will not pass on the pollution to another, no matter where this person goes
Not believing in the gods
A decree of 433BC was passed allowing the prosecution of individuals “who did not believe in the gods” (Plutarch, Pericles). It was under these circumstances that Socrates and as put to trial in 399BC
Mocking the gods
Thucydides tells us how Alcibiades, an Athenian statesman was sentenced to death after mocking the Eleusinian mysteries
An enquiry from Dodona reflects a concern about pollution
“is it because of some mortal’s pollution that we are suffering this storm?”
Apollonius of Rhodes suggests that purification for a murderer involved
silence, the sacrifice of a piglet and purification with blood of said piglet
Thucydides tell us that in 427BC, on a 2nd outbreak of plague
the Athenians sought purification “in accordance with some oracle”. All graces on the sacred island of Delos are removed and neither birth nor death will be permitted on it in future
