Clean hands, Pure Soul

Many classicists suggest that Greek sacrifice was mechanical and automatic. One of the burdens of Naiden’s Smoke Signals for the Gods is to show otherwise. Sacrifices were only acceptable to the gods if the worshiper was ritually and morally pure.

Naiden quoted Antiphon: “Many people with unclean hands or some other pollution board ships and travel alongside those who in their souls are hosioi in relation to the gods. Some people didn’t die this way, but ran great risks because of such company. Many people who clearly aren’t hosioi attend sacrifices and prevent customary sacrifices from being acceptable” (106). 

Antiphon emphasizes that this purity has to be in the soul, leading Naiden to this summary of Greek belief: “the worshipper put his soul before the god, not just his offering or reputation. His soul bore the impress of what he had been and done; it made him clean or unclean; and it made him fit or unfit. It formed part of the sacrificial context” (108).