Introduction Mark Bradley and Kenneth Stow; Part I. Antiquity: 1. Approaches to pollution and propriety Mark Bradley; 2. Pollution, religion and society in the Roman world Jack Lennon; 3. Purification in ancient Rome Elaine Fantham; 4. Pollution, propriety and urbanism in Republican Rome Penelope Davies; 5. The 'sacred sewer': tradition and religion in the Cloaca Maxima John Hopkins; 6. Crime and punishment on the Capitoline Hill Mark Bradley; 7. On the burial of unchaste Vestal Virgins Celia Schultz; Part II. Modernity: 8. Fra Girolamo Savonarola and the aesthetics of Roman pollution Alessio Assonitis; 9. Purging filth: plague and responses to it in Rome, 1656-7 David Gentilcore; 10. Was the ghetto cleaner...? Kenneth Stow; 11. Urban ablutions: cleansing counter-reformation Rome Katherine Rinne; 12. The clash of picturesque decay and modern cleanliness in late nineteenth-century Rome Taina Syrjämaa; 13. Vile bodies: Victorian Protestants in the Roman catacombs Dominic Janes; 14. Delinquency and pederasty: 'deviant' youngsters in the suburbs of Fascist Rome Martina Salvante; Envoi. Purity and danger: its life and afterlife Judith Goldstein.