View source for Miasma (Ancient Greek religion)

{{Short description|A contagious power believed to have a life of its own}}
{{Other uses|Miasma (disambiguation){{!}}Miasma}}
In [[Ancient Greek religion]], a '''miasma''' was "a contagious power... that has an independent life of its own. Until purged by the sacrificial death of the wrongdoer, society would be chronically infected by catastrophe."<ref>Armstrong, [https://books.google.com/books?id=vSYNEDJG4rQC&pg=PA64 p. 64&ndash;65].</ref>
An example is that of [[Atreus]], who invited his brother [[Thyestes]] to dine on a delicious stew, which had been prepared with the butchered flesh of Thyestes’s own sons. As a result, a miasma contaminated the entire family of Atreus, where one violent crime led to another, providing fodder for many of the Greek heroic tales. Attempts to cleanse a city or a society from miasma may have the opposite effect of reinforcing it.
==See also==
* [[Miasma theory]]
* [[Panacea (medicine)]]
==Notes==
{{Reflist}}
==References==
* {{cite book |last=Armstrong |first=Karen |authorlink=Karen Armstrong |title=The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions |publisher=Random House Digital, Inc. |year=2007 |isbn=9780385721240}}
* {{cite book |last1=Parker |first1=Robert |title=Miasma : pollution and purification in early Greek religion |date=1983 |publisher=Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780198147428}}
[[Category:Ancient Greek religion]]
[[Category:Greek mythology]]
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