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

remains which have recently been restored. However, it appears to have been a single-phase site which was neglected after Domitian’s death. The letter of Pliny the Younger quoted earlier (Ch. 8 above) about the villa of Regulus on the Tiber confirms that some Roman villas were located in areas which were known to be unhealthy.

Moreover Celli did not consider who built these villas, or ask who were the people who formed the labour force working out of these villas afterwards. He did not consider the importance of the fact that these villas had a labour force made up of slaves. He did not pay any attention, as a possible parallel, to the slave societies of the western hemisphere, where plantation owners were quite happy to make big profits by employing large numbers of slaves with a low life expectancy in very unhealthy environments.⁵⁹ He did not pay ⁵⁷ In using this line of argument it is necessary to take account of human population movements and migrations. The modern populations of some of the regions of Italy which formerly had endemic malaria have moved there recently from other areas. For example, the modern population of the new towns of the Pontine plain is largely descended from colonists sent there from the north of Italy by Mussolini in the 1930s (Gaspari 1985). Under such circumstances it would obviously be foolish to use the genetics of the modern population of this region to attempt to shed light on ancient malaria. Similar considerations apply to the population of the city of Rome itself, which has been a magnet for migrants not just in modern times but throughout history (see Ch. 11 below).

⁵⁸ Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 257, ed. Shackleton-Bailey (1965–70) (written on 14 March 45

) described Astura as a locus amoenus (a pleasant place) (unlike the Pontine Marshes); Virgil, Aeneid 7.801.

⁵⁹ Giglioli (1972) studied the large reductions in mortality following the eradication of malaria from the sugar plantations of Guyana. For comparative evidence from North America see also J. F. Smith (1985: 7, 136–7); Joyner (1984: 35–7, 70); Savitt (1978: 17–35); Merrens and Terry (1984); Dubisch (1985); Duffy (1988); Dobson (1989); Dusinberre (1996); Rutman and Rutman (1997).

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Roman Campagna

enough attention to the fact, accepted by all historians writing about the Roman Campagna from Ashby to Brunt, that there were very few significant towns or villages in Latium populated by free people during the Roman Empire. Free people had a choice of where to live, but slaves did not have any choice. The verdict of free people is much more significant in assessing the problem of the desirability of living in Latium. Above all, Celli, surprising as it may seem in a work of medical history, did not pay enough attention to one crucial category of literary evidence from antiquity, namely the evidence provided by the medical writers. It is worth quoting one paragraph from the English translation of Celli’s book to illustrate the problem:

The best description of the character of the different forms of fever is given by Galenus; he . . . describes vividly the . . . aestivo-autumnal fevers again recurrent in our days and which in those days were called ‘Emitritea fevers’, and were widely spread in Rome in summer and in autumn. The heavy occurrence of jaundice and dropsy could be daily observed, symptoms undoubtedly produced by malaria. This disease was widely spread at a time when we know from many signs and proofs [sc. villas, etc.] that the pest was diminishing in virulence.⁶⁰

The massive problem with this line of argument is that Galen does not say anything whatsoever about the pest diminishing in virulence! On the contrary, Galen explicitly described the semitertian fevers, which were so common in Rome, as extremely dangerous (kindunodvstatoß), as has already been seen (Ch. 8 above).

Moreover the symptoms of jaundice and dropsy noted by Celli himself indicate a severe disease. The direct testimony of Galen with regard to the virulence of the disease is much more significant than the extremely indirect evidence of villas which were largely populated by slaves. Celli’s argument for an attenuation of the severity of malaria during the Roman Empire, as a cyclical down-turn after the ravages which he argued it caused during the Late Republic, is very weak. There is no space to examine here in detail the possibility of fluctuations in the virulence of malaria in the Roman Campagna during more recent periods of history. That would require another book, which would have to be based on extensive research in archives and libraries in Italy, but the weak-

⁶⁰ Celli (1933: 47, 111–17).

Roman Campagna

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ness of Celli’s arguments about antiquity suggests that the enterprise would be worth undertaking.

There is only space here to note that some of the evidence presented by Celli himself for later periods contradicts his own theory in exactly the same way that Galen contradicted it in antiquity. For example, Celli argued, again on the basis of construction work (analogous to the villas of antiquity), that another period of attenuation of the severity of malaria occurred from the mid-fourteenth to the seventeenth century . However, he noted that the leading seventeenth-century historian of the city of Rome, Father Alexander Donatus, observed that the villas of that period were built in hilly locations precisely because the lowlands were unhealthy: The reason is to be sought in the unhealthy and noxious wildness of the air. For the opinion of the doctor Alexander Petronius, expressed in notable works, is confirmed by experience, with everyone’s agreement: the summer residences of the citizens in the vineyards around the city are unhealthy, and are not far away from the danger of ill-health. Consequently very few villas can be counted not only on the land along the Tiber, but even on the land around the city, despite the presence of so many noblemen and the abundance of wealth. The villas are located instead a little further away, on the ridges of Tibur, Tusculum, and Mt.

Albanus.⁶¹

Donatus’ evidence undermines Celli’s own theory. It is