Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy, Robert Sallares [reading a book TXT] 📗

Malaria prevents changes in the agricultural system, and this in turn maintains malaria. A vicious circle from which it is impossible to escape, except with an expression of energy and with an enormous and prompt expenditure of money which could only be expected from an energetic and wealthy government . . . but the current state of the finances of the Italian government . . . would not permit such a heroic remedy.²⁵

The accounts of early modern Lazio show that in the lowlands which were dominated by malaria it was virtually impossible to cultivate any crop which required attention in the summer and autumn (i.e. during the season of danger from malaria), such as spring-sown wheat, maize, or, most significantly given its importance in the economy, the vine. Viticulture ended at the altitude, going down the Alban hills, where malaria started.²⁶ In antiquity Cato states there were pestilential places where work was impossible in summer, just as in the early modern period. It is interesting that this was already the case by Cato’s time in the first half of the second century . In view of his writing about Graviscae (see Ch.

7 above), there is no doubt whatsoever that Cato knew all about endemic malaria.²⁷ In the passage quoted here, which deserves more attention than it has received, Cato gives an indication of the additional cost to the Roman economy of the mortality and morbidity arising from malaria, stating that the cost to a contractor of ²⁴ Columella, RR 1.4.2–3: In universum tamen quasi testificandum atque saepius praedicandum habeo, quod primo iam Punico bello dux inclitissimus M. Atilius Regulus dixisse memoratur: fundum sicuti ne fecundissimi quidem soli, cum sit insalubris . . . parandum; quod Atilius aetatis suae agricolis maiore cum auctoritate censebat peritus usu, nam Pupiniae pestilentis…agricultorem fuisse eum loquuntur historiae.

²⁵ F. Giordano Condizioni topografiche e fisiche . . . in Monografia (1881, LXII): ‘La malaria impedisce il mutare sistema di cultura, e questo viceversa mantiene la malaria. Circolo terribile dal quale è ben difficile escire, salvo con un atto di energia e con una ingente e pronta spesa che soltanto potrebbero attendersi da un governo energico e ricco di mezzi . . . Ma lo stato attuale delle finanze del Governo italiano . . . non consentirebbero ora un rimedio cosi eroico’.

²⁶ Columella RR III.2.16 said that the Eugenian vines of the Alban Hills in antiquity were adapted to a cold and damp climate. Evidently these vines were cultivated on the higher slopes of the Alban Hills. Pliny, NH 14.8.64 described the wine produced in the Alban Hills as very sweet. Knight (1805: 62) observed that since Albano is elevated, peasants from the surrounding area stayed there from July to September in the early nineteenth century to avoid ‘ “the malaria’, which is the name they give to the pernicious dews which fall in summer’. The Alban Hills reach altitudes of over 900 metres. Werner Sombart (1888) wrote a treatise about the peculiar economic problems of the Roman Campagna.

²⁷ North (1896: 74) reached an erroneous conclusion because he was not aware of the fragment of Cato on Graviscae, cf. Celli (1933: 26–7). Pliny, NH 14.8.67 mentioned the wine of Graviscae.

Roman Campagna

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building a villa was likely to rise by 25%. That such an estimate of the economic effects of malaria is quite realistic is shown by the report to President Roosevelt in 1938 of the National Emergency Council on economic conditions in the south of the United States, cited by Desowitz. This report estimated that malaria had reduced the industrial output of the southern states of the USA by about a third.²⁸ Of course, for the slaves actually doing the work envisaged by Cato, who were killed or whose health was ruined by malaria, the cost could not be evaluated in purely financial terms. In order not to end up owning areas with such enormous economic

problems (imagine what a sudden increase in labour costs of 25%

would do to business in the economy of any modern developed country), the Roman agronomists essentially recommended avoidance behaviour. One should refrain from buying pestilential land, such as the notorious ager Pupinius (or regio Pupiniae) towards Tusculum, where the Roman consul Regulus had a farm in the middle of the third century . Both Columella and Pliny record that Regulus already advised against the purchase of unhealthy farms, even if the soil was very fertile, as early as the third century . It is interesting that there was already intense malaria in at least part of the Roman Campagna at that time, moreover in an inland plain rather than the coastal plains.²⁹ As has already been observed, the distribution of malaria is always discontinuous and highly localized because of its very complicated ecological requirements. As Cicero put it:

let us return to the snares of Chrysippus: first of all certainly let us answer him on the question of contagion, and let us deal with other matters afterwards. We see how much difference there is in the nature of different places: some are healthy, others pestilential.³⁰

²⁸ Desowitz (1997: 197). Livadas and Athanassatos (1963) described the economic benefits of malaria eradication in Greece. McCarthy et al. (1999) found a statistically significant negative association between higher malaria morbidity rates and per capita GDP growth rates in tropical countries today.

²⁹ On the ager Pupinius see also Cicero, de lege agraria 2.35.96 and Varro, RR 1.9.5. On Regulus see also Pliny, NH 18.6.27: Atilius Regulus ille Punico bello bis consul aiebat neque fecundissimis locis insalubrem agrum parandum (Atilius Regulus, consul twice during the Punic War, said that an unhealthy estate should not be acquired even in the most fertile locations.); Valerius Maximus 4.4.6.

³⁰ Cicero, de fato 4 ed. Giomini (1975): ad Chrysippi laqueos revertamur; cui quidem primum de ipsa contagione rerum respondeamus, reliqua postea persequemur. Inter locorum naturas quantum intersit