reifies – male conceptions about the role of women in Greek culture at large (Carson
1999; Cole 1992; Von Staden 1992).
The various kinds of pollution which theleges sacraepostulate as ritual pollutions
are contracted beyond the boundaries of the sacred precinct. It is the sacred realm’s
perspective, not that of everyday life, which renders ordinary biological processes and
social activities as pollutions, necessitating purification if one wishes to cross the line
of constructed separation. How can that be? And how can we know whether these
lines of constructed separation might have been regarded as natural categories?
Surely, in their daily lives people would wish to have sexual intercourse, taste and
consume different foods, and not want to incur the wrath of a vengeful god for
transgressing purity rules on entering a sacred precinct. And they would by necessity
give birth, menstruate, abort or miscarry, kill or otherwise come into contact with
death, and not want to face the dire religious consequences of such activity.
An answer to our question may be found in several texts from western Asia Minor,
dating to the Roman period. They dramatize the conflict between the requirements
of the normality of everyday life and local purity regulations. A woman named
Eutychis twice goes into the village in a state of ritual impurity before the god takes
note and punishes her (SEG6.250). In another incident, a person claims to have
entered a shrine in a state of impurity, being unaware of the locally prevailing purity
regulations (MAMAIV.288). A man with the name of Sosandros commits perjury
and, thus polluted, nevertheless visits the temple (Journal of Hellenic Studies 10
[1889] 217 no. 1). A man called Aurelius Soterichos has sexual intercourse with
a woman in the sacred precinct (SEG6.251). All three are duly punished by the gods.
A slave owned by the sanctuary of some local deities even manages to have sexual
intercourse with three different women on three different occasions before the gods
stop him (SEG38.1237). These texts must not be read as claiming that no one ever
obeys purity rules. Although very few may have equaled Theophrastus’ superstitious
man in his ritual punctiliousness, most must have had at least a rudimentary awareness
of the various sources of ritual pollution that prevailed among them. But it is
impossible to tell how many observed the time of seclusion which had to pass before
they could again engage with others or even enter a sanctuary, if they had been
affected by a ritual pollution. And it is untenable to assume that purity regulations
were taken into account simply because they existed. To some, a simple purificatory
ritual like besprinkling with water may have sufficed. Others, as the instances from
Asia Minor suggest, may not have cared all that much or could always pretend not to
know, until convicted by the gods.
These instances further suggest that, even if people generally may have wished to
obey purity regulations, they seemed nonetheless prepared to contract a pollution
seemingly without much religious scruple, if the situation demanded it. Sometimes,
or so Aurelius Soterichos must have reckoned, the opportunity was simply too good
to let it pass. It is only when misfortune strikes that our current misery is causally
related to a past transgression; it then becomes ‘‘punishment by a god.’’ The cause of
one’s present misfortune can always be explained as a pollution which one contracted
in the past – there are many opportunities to overstep the constructed boundaries
between the ‘‘pure’’ and the ‘‘polluted’’ – but which had lain dormant until now. It is
in situations such as these that the religious category of ritual pollution can be used as
a singularly satisfactory interpretative model. For if ‘‘pollution’’ is the answer to our
Purity and Pollution 183