Miasma

Looking into the heated discussions developed around Antiphon’s Tetralogies, one of the most controversial yet fascinating aspects concerns “the law forbidding just as well as unjust killing”, the prohibition  of «μήτε δικαίως μήτε ἀδίκως ἀποκτείνειν», which is mentioned four times in the second and third tetralogy. The prohibition is seemingly incompatible with the Athenian juridical system of the classical period, for it counted certain cases in which killing was considered lawful, therefore unworthy of punishment. This explains why some scholar has even got to deny that the trials depicted by Antiphon took place in Athens, as well as the juridical significance of the Tetralogies. This study, after an accurate analysis of the most authoritative opinions regarding the subject, suggests a personal new interpretation of the “law forbidding just as well as unjust killing”.

Scholars often view Sophocles’ Antigone as a series of binaries established by the conflict between Creon’s desire to leave his rival Polyneices unburied and Antigone’s opposing desire to bury her brother. This has been read as an allegory of family versus state values, religion versus politics and female versus male agendas. However, despite their differences both Creon and Antigone are punished by the end of Sophocles’ play. Creon’s son kills himself in response to his father’s burial of his betrothed Antigone and Antigone herself perishes in her tomb; neither agenda is vindicated. I suggest that this is because both Antigone and Creon ignore the fact that both Antigone’s deceased brothers are polluting Thebes with their presence.

Their mutual pollution is elicited in Creon’s opening monologue: καὶ πληγέντες αὐτόχειρι σὺν μιάσματι (Antig. 172). Thus according to Creon each brother delivered the other’s fatal blow in a polluting act of fratricide. Yet in pursuing their own respective agendas both Creon and Antigone fail to recognise that this pollution lingers on Polyneices’ unburied body and Eteocles’ buried corpse.

This study will evidence the polluting presence of both brothers’ bodies in Sophocles’ Antigone, and then considers why Sophocles’ characters fail to acknowledge it. I will then determine to what extent Sophocles’ audience would have recognised this oversight by considering contemporary variants of the burial myth. Ultimately, this study will evaluate to what extent both brothers’ burials contributed to Creon and Antigone’s demise.

Les moyens archéologiques pour repérer et caractériser la maternité du point de vue corporel, social et symbolique du terme se limitent au matériel funéraire et quelques figurines votives. `A l’exception des femmes mortes pendant la grossesse, la maternité ainsi que la mort en couches sont  perceptibles dans les sépultures seulement au travers du squelette de la femme et de son mobilier, l’enfant faisant l’objet d’un traitement différentiel et étant d’habitude absent.  Nous proposons deux nouveaux critères pour identifier ces mères disparues. Pour des raisons culturelles, considérer que, parmi les aôroi de 12 à 15 ans, il y en a plusieurs déjà mariées et, de ce fait, mortes à cause d’un accouchement précoce ou des suites d’un traitement gynécologique maladroit. Les objets qui les accompagnent sont à lire comme un système de signes qui structure un discours autour de leur identité intime et sociale. Dans l’exemple donné, l’hypothèse porte sur des indications d’un mariage, la douleur causée par la disparition d’une fille à l’âge fleuri, par un accouchement non abouti provoquant à la défunte la perte de sa qualité essentielle comme femme de citoyen : celle de procréer. La préoccupation pour une grossesse réussie se retrouve chez quelques figurations étonnantes en terre cuite, déposées dans des sanctuaires de divinités féminines. De manière directe ou indirecte, elles représentent les parties du corps concernées par la parturition. Le  déchiffrage de ces images présuppose aussi la connaissance d’un langage de signes jouant sur des métaphores utilisant le vocabulaire médical de l’époque. Ces jeux aident à éviter les actes de souillure tout en permettant d’offrir une image de la fécondité.

The means offered by archeology to identify and characterize motherhood in the physical, social and symbolic aspect of the term are limited to the funerary material and to some terra cotta ex-voto. Apart from the women who died during pregnancy, motherhood and death during childbirth cannot be discerned except through the bones of the mother and the grave goods that accompany her, since the stillborn and perinatals were usually subject to a different burial treatment and were buried separately.  We propose two new criteria to enable us to distinguish these mothers. To assume, for cultural reasons, that among the aôroi of 12 to 15 years old there are many who were already married and probably died because of an early delivery or a clumsy gynecological treatment. The objects that accompany them act like a system of signs that constructs a discourse around the private and social identity. In the example given here, the hypothesis made about this context presents indications concerning marriage, the pain caused by the disappearance of the girl, an unconcluded birth, and the loss of every hope for creating progeny, which is important for the status of the citizen’s woman. The concern for a successful pregnancy is also apparent in some astonishing clay figurines deposited in sanctuaries of female divinities. They represent, directly or indirectly, the parts of the body associated with childbirth. Deciphering these objects also requires the knowledge of a special language of signs based on the play of metaphors that used the medical vocabulary of the period. These plays allow the believers to offer this type of fecundity images without committing any miasma.

Within the territories of the city of Abdera, where the water is caracteristically present, the rites connected with it, attested through archaeology inside the necropoleis as well as in the sanctuary, testify the existence of concrete gestures against pollution from birth and from death and let the construction of an identity of the dead, infant or adolescent, be revealed, depending on the degree of integration in the social web.
This identity, rooted on the city ground and connected to the notion of reproduction should be based on the fecundity and purification virtues of water, which is also proven by the worship carried out in the sanctuary.

Dans le territoire de la cité d’Abdère, où l’eau est fortement présente, les rites qui lui sont liés, attestés par l’archéologie tant dans les nécropoles qu’au sanctuaire, témoignent de gestes précis contre la pollution de la naissance et de la mort, et laissent entrevoir la construction de l’identité du défunt, enfant ou adolescent, selon son degré d’intégration dans le tissu social. Cette identité, ancrée au sol de la cité et associée à la notion de procréation, tiendrait aux vertus purificatrices et fécondatrices de l’eau, ce que le culte pratiqué au sanctuaire prouve de son côté.

"Similar Squatting
Targets BRAND NAME domains
Relies on typographical errors made by direct input URLs
Often involved with illegal activity
Also used for FINANCIAL gain
According to Brandjacking Index, the risk of brand misuse worldwide is the highest in US, Germany and UK.
59%+ all websites using brand names for illegal purposes originate from these three countries.
Organization Focused on defeating these efforts
Alias Encore 

Hacker groups Anonymous R00tbeer Dark.Team

Joey Hernandez for more information"

http://www.otium.unipg.it/otium/article/view/34

The main goal of this paper is to examine some traditions about Orestes‟ purification in Greek mainland (Arkadia, Troizen, Gytheium, Keryneia), in order to demonstrate two aspects: the diachronic and diatopic variety of mythical traditions about purification for homicide and the position of Delphi in the purification processes.

The term miasma was coined by Hippocrates of Kos. He introduced it to describe dangerous fumes from the ground that are transported by winds and can cause serious illnesses. Up until the late 19th century, miasmas from swamps were blamed for giving rise to and spreading so-called intermittent fever, cold fever, swamp fever or malaria. It was not until 1898 that the mosquito genus Anopheles was identified as the agent responsible for transmitting malaria. On 30 April 1857, the Austrian frigate Novara left Trieste to circumnavigate the globe. One of the medical officers on board, Dr. Eduard Schwarz, studied the composition of miasmas in detail and published his investigations in the medical section of the "Novara Chronicles" in 1861. Schwarz attributed the dreaded Nicobar fever to decomposition processes of organic material, which released dangerous miasmas that could only be eliminated by draining the swamps. Karl von Scherzer, the scientific director of the Novara expedition, collected exact information about the distribution range of the cinchona tree, which was said to be threatened with extinction, a rumor that later proved to be false. Quinine was gained from the bark of the tree and was used worldwide to treat malaria, pains, and fever. Der Begriff Miasma geht auf Hippokrates von Kos zurück. Er verstand darunter gefährliche Ausdünstungen des Bodens, die sich in der Luft verbreiten und zu bösen Krankheiten führen. Noch bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts wurden den Miasmen der Sümpfe die Schuld an der Entstehung und Verbreitung des so genannten Wechselfiebers, kalten Fiebers, Sumpffiebers oder Malaria gegeben. Erst 1898 wurden die Vorgänge bei der Übertragung des Malaria-Erregers durch die Stechmückengattung Anopheles aufgeklärt. Am 30. April 1857 war die österreichische Fregatte Novara zu einer Weltumsegelung von Triest aus in See gestochen. Einer der Schiffsärzte, Dr. Eduard Schwarz, befasste sich eingehend mit der Beschaffenheit der Miasmen und veröffentlichte seine Untersuchungen in dem medizinischen Teil des "Novara-Werkes", 1861. Schwarz erklärte das Auftreten des gefürchteten Nikobaren-Fiebers durch Zersetzungsprozesse organischer Stoffe, die zu den gefährlichen Miasmen führen, die nur durch Trockenlegen der Sümpfe beseitigt werden könnten. Karl von Scherzer, der wissenschaftliche Leiter der Novara-Expedition, holte genaue Informationen über das Verbreitungsgebiet des Chinarindenbaumes ein, da dieser gerüchteweise vom Aussterben bedroht gewesen sein soll, was sich aber in der Folge als unwahr erwiesen hatte. Aus der Rinde dieses Baumes wurde das Chinin hergestellt, das als Mittel gegen Malaria, Schmerzen und Fieber weltweit seine Anwendung fand.

Euthyphro is a Socratic interlocutor claiming enormous religious expertise, while his portrayal in the eponymous dialogue raises questions the reliability of his beliefs. This paper closely examines how Euthyphro justifies his case against his father, identifying an argument that relies on the concept of miasma (pollution). In so far as miasma is considered in isolation, Euthyphro has a good argument. Unfortunately, there is more than miasma at stake when considering why one could prosecute one's own parent. Introducing the other relevant concepts, honor and shame, we find his case reflects a dilemma at the source of ancient Greek religious thought. It would not be possible for Euthyphro or anyone else to know what to do in his case. This is why even now I go around in accordance with the God, seeking out and investigating both citizens and foreigners, any whom I suppose are wise, and when someone doesn't seem so to me, I make it clear they are not wise, assisting the god. (Appology 23b) 1 Euthyphro is a classic Socratic interlocutor, one who claims expertise in religion and is then shown that he does not know what he claims to know. Plato's vivid characterization of Euthyphro's variety of quirks, his claims of superiority, his lack of self-awareness, his susceptibility to Socrates' mocking flattery, the outrageousness of his case, make it easy to lose sight of any philosophically significant elements contained in his claims. While he exemplifies the type of epistemic hubris Socrates is out to cure, it would be a mistake to write him off ad hominem. This paper explores the source of Euthyphro's cognitive confidence, an argument he makes to justify prosecuting his father for murder. In the first section of this paper, we look at the particularities of the situation surrounding the case. Then we examine the argument he makes, clarifying his assertions into a more formal format. With this argument clarified, we can consider the available options for interpreting it. In the third section of this paper, Margaret Visser's work on the 1 All quotations from Plato are my own translations.

Recorded instances of δυσφημία and βλασφημία, Greek speech transgression with detrimental spiritual impact, are subjected to an analysis by categories. Six concrete types are identified: (1) perceived dogmatic error (rare outside philosophical literature); (2) talk of death; (3) mention of undesirable entities; (4) mention of undesirable outcomes; (5) mention of undesirable human actions, attitudes and traits; (6) generally unpleasant speech, for instance lament, complaint and bad news. These categories partly overlap and may be sorted into three genera: (a) = category 1, false dogmatic assertion; (b) ill omen, that is, the invocation of anything that is undesirable; (c) negative speech that is hateful to the gods on aesthetic grounds, for instance lament and mention of death. The first two genera reflect relatively universal religious attitudes, but with regard to its importance and scope, the last one appears to be culturally specific. It is related to the concept of miasma, spiritual pollution.

The articles are  a result of the original research on the topics, some of which are new for historiography: Children.- Consumption Patterns.- Cosmetics.- Diet and Nutrition Surveys.- Germ Theory of Disease.- History of Consumption and Waste, U.S. 1850-1900.- Household Consumption Patterns.- Magazines and Newspapers.-Miasma Theory of Disease.- Slow Food.-Social Sensibility.-  Thallium. - Utah (consumption, waste collection and disposal)