Miasma - Robert Parker

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 inritual 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 indetail.