ABSTRACT
Dirt can be conceptualised as physical-concrete, but also as immaterial-abstract. It is generally held that beliefs on dirt and pollution concepts in ancient Greece (konis, pinos, lyma, miasma, akomistie), as well as the understanding of cleanliness and purification (katharsis, komide) saw changes from the Homeric to the Classical period. There is, however, a debate currently taking place regarding the quality and the degree of changes involved. It would be an oversimplification to characterise the changing conception of dirt as from material-concrete to immaterial-abstract. On the one hand, such a statement would ignore authors like Aischylos (Ag. 772-74), who, in a masterly fashion, opposed the physical-concrete, social and moral dimensions of pinos (dirt) and chrysos (gold) in terms of poverty and wealth, purity and rottenness, and goodness and badness. On the other, it would play down the crucial fact that the immaterial-abstract conceptualisation of dirt and pollution of the Classical period had strong material-concrete reference points (e.g. Herodotos 1.35.1; Aischylos Eu. 52, 280-81; Plato Ti. 22D; Aristophanes V. 118). At the other end of the scale, it would also disregard the symbolic overtones of dirt in the Homeric epics (cf. Vernant 1996; Parker 1996; Wöhrle 1996; contra Gillies 1925; Moulinier 1952; Rudhart 1958: 51; Mije 1991a, 1991b; Neumann 1992), as, for instance, when Odysseus cleansed away from his oikos (household) with sulphur and fire the traces of murder that had already been removed by his servants (Hom. Od. 22.436-94). Less ambiguous is the development of the conceptual framework of miasma that appears in c. 600 BC, in particular in the works of Alkaios and Solon, for the first time (Neumann 1992: 73, add. Solon fr. 23.10 [Franyó and Gan 1981]). However, in this chapter, I do not want to get caught up in such unfruitful discussion on particular kinds of dirt. Consequently, I will conceptualise all kinds of cleanliness and dirt simply as social symbols, and explore their role in the structuration of Greek society.
