Corpse defilement

Greeks, like Jews, believed that corpses defiled. According to Robert Parker’s classic Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Clarendon Paperbacks) , a dead body defiled not only the people present, but also the house, which had to be cleansed after the body was removed. Even the water of the house became defiled, and water for purification had to be fetched from a neighbor. Some texts imply that the entire clan of the dead person becomes defiled by death. This was carried over even into the cults of the dead: Some Greek writers indicate that anyone who participated in a hero cult had to purified afterward.

There is some indication that not all corpses were impure or communicators of impurity. Parker finds it “tempting” to speculate that slaves, children, and others low on the social scale were considered less impure, and Plato says quite explicitly that the corpse of a good man cannot pollute. Simonides said that those good men who died in their country’s service are not impure: “Their tomb is an altar; in place of lament they have remembrance, grief becomes praise.”