Mark Bradley is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Nottingham. His main research and teaching interests are in the visual and intellectual culture of imperial Rome, and his recent work has been particularly concerned with exploring cultural differences in perception, aesthetics and sensibilities. His first book, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 2009), was longlisted for the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing, and he is the author of several articles in the field of Roman visual culture. He is Editor of The Papers of the British School at Rome and is currently working on a book on foul bodies in Ancient Rome.

• 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.

'A sophisticated analysis … within this volume Rome has become an excellent test study for the examination of theoretical approaches to pollution and purity that should be sought after by students and scholars in anthropology, classical art and archaeology, and social and cultural history.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review