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

already been noted in connection with the description of the Maremma by Rutilius Namatianus (see Ch. 7 above), is particularly striking. The town occupied a fine site, but required more colonists in 197 , less than a century after its foundation. Its from the countryside of Latium to the city of Rome. The two doctors, Quinctius Theoxenus and Gaius Licinius Asclepias, who are recorded as having lived in Setia undoubtedly had plenty of work to do ( CIL X.6469 and 6471). On Setia see also Attema (1993: 87–9). Setia was a site of triumviral colonization, according to the Liber Coloniarum, i. 237–8, cf. Cicero, de lege agraria 2.25.66. Nicolai (1800: 42–3) described early modern Setia as rich in olive trees, but very rich in vines.

⁴² Livy 7.38.7: pestilenti et arido circa urbem solo.

⁴³ Dionysius Hal. 15.3.4: Kampan≤an . . . prÏß Ëg≤eian ånqr*poiß gewrgoısin år≤sthn oÇsan. Cicero, de lege agraria 2.35.96, Pliny, NH 3.5.60 and Strabo 5.4.2.242C also praised the Campanian plain. Presumably the reference is mainly to the interior plain around Capua, since there certainly were some unhealthy parts of Campania, such as the coast around Paestum. For the general idea of disease forcing people to migrate see also Seneca, ad Helviam matrem de consolatione 7.4, ed. Hermes (1905).

⁴⁴ Delumeau (1957: i. 220): Mais si Rome s’accroît entre 1527 et 1600 de quelque 50,000 habitants, ne serait-ce pas aussi aux dépens de la campagne voisine où les moissons diminuent et où la malaria multiplie ses ravages?

Roman Campagna

251

subsequent history was rather disjointed.⁴⁵ The failure of repeated attempts to colonize coastal areas can be attributed to malaria.

In the Renaissance period Niccolò Machiavelli claimed that unhealthy areas could be made healthy if they were colonized by a large body of men, but this was wishful thinking on his part.⁴⁶ The healthiness of Venice is to be explained in other ways; in antiquity it was undoubtedly part of the region of anophelism without malaria which also included Ravenna (see Ch. 4. 2 above). Subsequently, however, Venice did not dry up and suffer the same environmental changes as the coast around Ravenna. Pisa’s problems have already been noted. Machiavelli understood the importance of colonization for the success of Roman imperialism in antiquity, but his argument misses the point that short-term colonization cannot ensure long-term population stability in the face of malaria. The Romans in antiquity were unable to populate in the long run those areas with the most intense malaria. The rulers of Florence in Machiavelli’s own time were no more successful, since the detailed evidence available to modern historians shows that in the late medieval and Renaissance periods the Maremma only had a population density of about 5–10 people per square kilometre, in contrast to population density levels of about 150 per square kilometre in the immediate vicinity of Florence itself. Many men were driven by dire necessity to seek seasonal employment in agriculture in the Maremma, but the bulk of those people chose not to reside permanently and work and die under the conditions of endemic malaria.⁴⁷

Although slavery had not yet completely disappeared, the economy of Renaissance Florence was not based on mass chattel slavery. The difference in antiquity was that ancient Rome was a society with the potential for massive chattel slavery as the basis of the labour force and the slaves had no choice over where to live and die.

⁴⁵ On Cosa see Celuzza (1993: 227–34); Fentress (1994: 281) concluded that ‘the only “continuity” evident at Cosa is the continual difficulty of keeping its inhabitants for more than a few generations’.

⁴⁶ Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ii.1 ed. Carli (1927): I paesi male sani diventano sani per una moltitudine di uomini che ad un tratto gli occupi; i quali con la cultura sanifichino la terra e con i fuochi purghino l’aria; a che la natura non potrebbe mai provedere. Il che dimostra la città di Vinegia, posta in luogo paduloso e infermo: nondimeno i molti abitatori che ad un tratto vi concorsono lo renderono sano. Pisa ancora, per la malignità dell’aria, non fu mai di abitatori ripiena, se non quando Genova e le sue riviere furono dai Saraceni disfatte; il che fece che quelli uomini, cacciati da’ terreni patrii, ad un tratto in tanto numero vi concorsono, che feciono quella popolata e potente.

⁴⁷ Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber (1985: 35, 49); Pinto (1982: 44, 53–4, 66); Bueti and Corti (1998).

252

Roman Campagna

Finley emphasized how rare mass chattel slavery has been in human history: there have only been five major cases in recorded history, namely the United States, the Caribbean islands, and Brazil, after 1492, and ancient Rome and Greece (and a few other minor cases which he did not consider). There was a fundamental difference between the classical Greek city-states and the other four cases in respect of the scale of slavery, as in respect of the scale of everything else, which sets apart classical Athens from the other four. The origins of the slave trade to the western hemisphere are well known and have been described by numerous historians: the European conquerors initially tried to put the indigenous Amerindians to work, but they were decimated by diseases introduced by the colonists, as part of the Columbian exchange which has been so well described by McNeill and Crosby. Subsequently there was a tremendous shortage of labour to work the plantations, a gap which was filled by importations of Negro slaves from Africa, who were more resistant to European diseases than the Amerindians but nevertheless suffered extremely high mortality rates, and who had the virtue (for their buyers) of being cheap and readily available in large numbers. Benjamin Franklin in 1751 concluded that the reason why estate owners in the United States turned to slave labour was simply a question of labour costs: imported slaves were much cheaper than hired labour from the thinly scattered white population.

The reason for the genesis of an economy based on mass chattel