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

very reveal-ing to compare Donatus’ account with the archaeological evidence for the distribution of ancient Roman villas around Praeneste, for example, as described by Andreussi:

All these villas arose either on the flat summits of hills separated by deep ravines, or on the southern slopes of the same hills, with a good aspect and view.⁶²

The similarity to the situation described by Donatus in the seventeenth century is obvious.⁶³ It is likely that Donatus was right, ⁶¹ Donatus (1694: bk iii. ch. 21, p. 272): Causa rejicienda est in aëris intemperiem insalubrem, et gravem. Nam quod Alexander Petronius Medicus insignis typis evulgavit, omnium assensu, et experientia com-probatur; insalubres esse Civibus circum Urbem aestivas in vineis stationes, nec procul a periculo valetudinis abesse. Itaque non modo secundum Tiberim, sed etiam in agro suburbano, in tanta Principum et divitiarum copia, paucissimae numerantur Villae, quae paulo remotiora Tiburis, Tusculi et Albae juga insederunt.

⁶² Andreussi in Giardina and Schiavone (1981), i. 351: tutte queste ville sorgevano o sulle sommità piatte di colli separati da profondi burroni, o sui pendii meridionali dei colli stessi, con buona esposizione e vista.

⁶³ Note also the comments of Thomas and Wilson (1994: 173) on the location of Roman 260

Roman Campagna

and the lowlands were always very unhealthy (from at least c.200 

onwards) because of malaria. Equally, there were always some healthy locations available for villas, especially on the slopes and summits of hills, during both the time of the Roman Empire and all subsequent periods. Humans continuously made efforts to reclaim the lowlands, for example the domuscultae of Pope Zacharias (

742-752), but they were always beaten back by malaria until modern times.⁶⁴ In so far as there were any periodic variations in the distribution and/or frequency (transmission rate) of malaria, these are much more likely to have been caused by local environmental change affecting the breeding habitats of mosquitoes, a question which Celli did not consider at all. The modern areas of anophelism without malaria were probably created by the modernization of Italian agriculture with the integration of arable farming and animal husbandry (replacing traditional transhumance) in a way that favoured zoophilic over anthropophilic species of Anopheles mosquito. There seems to be little evidence in fact that any of the regions of anophelism without malaria considered by Fantini actually existed before the nineteenth century. Pisa, for example, has already been considered. Its territory was unhealthy during the Renaissance period. Similarly the Val di Chiana, where Hackett performed some of his famous studies, and other areas of anophelism without malaria in Tuscany in the late nineteenth century such as Fucécchio and Altopáscio, were extremely unhealthy in the eyes of late medieval and Renaissance historians.

Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, for example, described these areas as ‘fever-ridden sinks’.⁶⁵ The vicinity of the southern end of the Val di Chiana continued to suffer from malaria into the nineteenth century, since Cesare Massari, a doctor from Perugia who pub-villas. On the Via Praenestina east of Rome at Ponte di Nona a mid-to late Republican healing sanctuary was excavated. Many terracotta votive offerings were found. Wells (1985) interpreted the large number of terracotta heads found at this site as connected with cerebral malaria. Grmek and Gourevitch (1998: 347–8) described Wells’s analysis as an example of ‘overinterpretation’. It is certainly true that there are many other possible causes of pain in the head besides cerebral malaria. Consequently no individual terracotta head can be conclusively associated with malaria. However, given the sanctuary’s geographical location, it is likely that some of the votive offerings were the result of malarial infections, although there is no way of knowing which ones.

⁶⁴ Tomassetti (1910: i. 110–12) on the domuscultae, which he described as a villaggio sparso, wrote as follows: la durata di esse fu di circa trecento anni; la decadenza ne fu rapida e l’abbandono fu assai dannoso.

⁶⁵ Fantini (1994); Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber (1985: 34).

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261

lished a history of that town’s experiences of epidemic disease in 1838, recorded the establishment of a hospital in about 1816 at Corciano specifically to handle cases of malaria among the inhabitants of the region of Lake Trasimene.⁶⁶ This proves that the region’s status as an area of anophelism without malaria was a modern development. Besides the drainage scheme that was mentioned earlier, it is also likely that increasing usage of quinine in the hospital during the nineteenth century played a significant role in the defeat of malaria in that region.

⁶⁶ Massari (1838: 144–5): Nè deve sotto silenzio passarsi il provvedimento preso in quel tempo di stabilire uno Spedale nella terra di Corciano, distante sei miglia al ponente di Perugia, per la via di Toscana, a racchiudimento di tutte que’ febbricitanti i quale dalle vicinanze del Trasimeno, per le cattive arie d’estate ed autunno, entravano ammorbati tra noi. E là dovevano essere medicati que’ laghegiani, cui la continua o la intermittente paludosa febbre avesse colto.

10

Apulia

Although the focus of this book is on western central Italy, Latium and Etruria, it must not be forgotten that much of southern Italy was also severely affected by malaria, as Alcuin commented in  801 upon hearing of the intentions of the army of the Frankish king Pipin:

I have heard that you are about to go to devastate the land of Beneventum. Ensure that you have maximum knowledge of the danger awaiting you there because of the pestilential air of that land.¹

The Samnite and later Roman city of Beneventum occupied a plateau (135 metres above sea level) between two rivers, the Sabato and the Calore. The site of the city itself was healthy, as Eustachius emphasized in his account of the air of Beneventum published in  1608. He acknowledged that some diseases entered the city at the time of the rising of the dog-star and the Etesian winds and noted that some patterns of autumn weather could produce ‘bad air’ at Beneventum. Nevertheless he maintained that the respiratory diseases of winter were more important than summer diseases at Beneventum (see Ch. 5. 2 above for