and pollution is the example of Epimenides, a legendary ‘‘purifier’’ (katharte ̄s) from
Crete, who is said to have purified Athens from the Cylonianagos(‘‘polluting curse’’),
the murder of Cylon and his supporters, around 600 BC ([Aristotle]Athenaio ̄n
Politeia1). The purification ritual proper follows the removal of the homicides,
both those dead and those still alive, from Athens. Others make that ‘‘polluting
curse’’ the cause of an epidemic (loimos) which is brought to a halt only when two
young Athenians die a substitute death for their city (FGrH457 T1¼Diogenes
Laertius 1.110).
Modern discussions tend to portray pollution as the inevitable result of murder,
not only affecting and haunting the culprit himself but also causing the immediate
pollution of his fellow-citizens and the political community at large. If that were the
case, why should the Thebans take the risk of displaying such negligence and fail to
deal with their own polluted status, and why should they need reminding from
Phoebus Apollo of what exactly themiasmais? Did they not know that Laius had
died without revenge? Yet the textual basis for assuming a necessary and immediate
causal link between homicide and pollution is meager. The so-calledTetralogies
ascribed to Antiphon (late fifth century) may play with the idea that the homicide’s
polluted state is also polluting the city until the culprit is prosecuted and condemned
(Parker 1983:103–7). But use of that idea in these courtroom exercises serves as an
emotional frame and hence as a rhetorical means intended to manipulate – through
exaggeration, as we shall see in a moment – the feelings and sentiments of the
(hypothetical) Athenian jury. The idea must not be interpreted as directly reflecting
Athenian legal practices and norms. Book 9 of Plato’sLawscontains a discussion as to
how different types of homicide necessitate different grades of pollution on the
culprit’s part. The Platonic ideal law-code differentiates between deliberate but
justifiable homicide, in which case no state of pollution applies, accidental homicide,
carrying no penalty but requiring some purification, other forms of involuntary
homicide, for which only exile can serve as an adequate cathartic procedure, and
parricide, when the only feasible measure is death followed by the subsequent
mutilation of the unburied corpse (Laws865a–869e). But the close link that Plato’s
law-code establishes between homicide and pollution should be read as the supple-
mentary theological interpretation of the legal dimension of murder. His law-code
becomes a morally loaded and thus distorted reflection of common legal norms and
rules. By way of contrast, no strong notion regarding the polluting consequences of
homicide can be found in the extant Attic Orators. And it is striking how any notion
of pollution appears to be entirely absent from the extant Athenian legislation as
preserved in Draco’s law of homicide republished in 409/8 BC, which seems to be
concerned largely with mitigating the legal consequences of involuntary or accidental
homicide (IGi^2115 ¼i^3104 ¼M-L 86). Athens in the late fifth century seems not
particularly preoccupied with identifying a polluting stain on the citizen body as the
result of murder in the city. The penalty that the law prescribes, namely exile, can be
avoided; nor does it carry the connotation of a cathartic measure as in the case of
Plato’s homicide ‘‘law’’ or in Sophocles’ play.
In the case of homicide, pollution has to be made public in order to come into
existence. The killer is not by default polluted, and hence not automatically a source
of pollution to others, but rather free from it as long as he has not been declared a
murderer. In the Athenian legal procedure, this happens by means of what is called
Purity and Pollution 185