Pollution and contagion:

the plague as a result of miasma in Oedipus King

Abstract

This paper aims at analysing the way through which the notion of miasma can be considered as indispensable to understand both contagion and the plague in Oedipus Rex. First, one analyses some Homeric excerpts that demonstrate the relation of the characters with the purification of the hands before worship actions and also Aeschylus and Sophocles’ approach to the notions of purity and impurity. Then, one analyses the catastrophic dimension that the miasma bears in Oedipus Rex. By doing so, one sustains the thesis that contagious plague in the latter is due to Oedipus’ dirtiness to which he did not seek proper cleansing. Hence, one seeks to disengage the play from the notion of divine punishment showing that the blood is an extremely powerful source of contamination.