Extract

The concept of ‘purification’, like that of *pollution, was applied in very diverse ways in Greek *ritual. Many purifications were performed not in response to specific pollutions, but as preparation for particular events or actions or on a regular calendar basis. The Athenian assembly (see ekklēsia), for instance, was purified at the start of meetings (by carrying the body of a sacrificed piglet around it), and temples could be treated similarly; individuals purified themselves by washing before approaching the gods. Most drastically, some whole cities of ancient Ionia, not excluding Athens, were purified annually by the expulsion of human scapegoats at the festival *Thargelia.There were many different techniques of purification: by washing or sprinkling, by fumigation (with sulphur above all), by ‘rubbing off’ with mud or bran; all admitted various degrees of symbolic elaboration (the use of sea-water, or water from a special spring, or even from seven springs, for instance). *Sacrifice too, or modified forms of it, often functioned as a purification: the corpse might be carried around the place to be purified (see above), while the blood supposedly sticking to a killer was ‘washed off with blood’ by pouring that of the animal victim over his hands.