ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses one distinctive feature of homicide at Athens: the religious pollution that attached to those who committed it. It addresses the question of why this powerful concept seems to appear relatively infrequently in the forensic sources and argues that it was because the homicide courtroom procedures as well as popular knowledge about homicide and the laws that governed it emphasised the religious danger that surrounded the crime and thus rendered rhetoric on the subject less effective. It then assesses several instances where the rhetoric of pollution can be identified in the forensic speeches and demonstrates that the dikastic courts allowed greater opportunities to explore the concept due to their distance from the homicide courtroom setting. It analyses how this rhetoric functioned in practice and further argues that the surviving sources suggest there was a clear difference in the way homicide could persuasively be discussed between the two sets of courts.
