Description
| Product ID: | 9780198147428 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Series: | Clarendon Paperbacks |
| Title: | Miasma |
| Subtitle: | Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion |
| Authors: | Author: Robert Parker |
| Page Count: | 432 |
| Subjects: | Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Indigenous religions, spiritual beliefs and mythologies of the Americas, Ancient religions & mythologies, Ancient Greece, Ancient (Classical) Greek |
| Description: | Readers of Greek literary, historical, oratorical, ritual and even medical texts, are all liable to encounter ideas of pollution. This text seeks to describe and analyze this wide-ranging and complex concept. Anyone who has sampled even a few of the most commonly read Greek texts will have encountered pollution. The pollution of bloodshed is a frequent theme of tragedy: Orestes is driven mad; Oedipus brings plague upon all Thebes. In historical texts we find cities intervening in the internal affairs of others to `drive out the pollution'', or making war on account of it. Political orators represent their opponents as polluting demons. Purity is a constant concern in ritual texts, and any Greek underwent many small purifications in his everyday life. Certain abnormal religious movements of the archaic age made `purification'' the path to felicity in the afterlife. First published in hardback in 1983, Miasma is the first work in English to treat this theme in detail. |
| Imprint Name: | Clarendon Press |
| Publisher Name: | Oxford University Press |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 1990-03-22 |
