ABSTRACT
While contemporary western cities are often represented in positive terms, as centres of culture and power, they are just as frequently associated with bad health and, ultimately, death. Urban environments have largely been perceived as harbingers of disease because of the waste disposal problems which are inherent to densely populated areas and because the spread of disease is seen to be facilitated by cramped living conditions. The city has also been perceived as unhealthy because of problems associated with the disposal of the dead. Since corpses are believed to cause disease, a vicious circle is created, wherein the likelihood of disease and death is not only increased by unhealthy urban conditions but, in turn, is increased by incidents of death itself. Influenced by modern perceptions of cities, scholars have often seen ancient cities as insanitary and polluted. Most notably, Scobie (1986) and Grmek (1991) have sought to explain how the overpopulated and insanitary living conditions found in ancient urban environments increased mortality rates. However, as I hope to show, while ancient Greeks also associated cities with death and disease, they did so in entirely different ways.
