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

the relationship between the two) and that the inhabitants of the city as a whole were healthy.

However, river valleys always had potential as far as malaria was concerned. Some parts of the region had a reputation for malaria throughout the medieval and early modern periods. Doni noted that there were unhealthy localities near Beneventum and Telesia in Samnium in the seventeenth century. More recently the distribution of malaria extended from Campania across the provinces of Benevento and Campobasso towards the Adriatic coast.² Con-

¹ Alcuin, Epistolae, 224, ed. Duemmler (1895), Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Epistolae, iv.

367: Audivi vos ituros esse ad vastandam Beneventanam patriam. Scis optime, quale periculum ibi imminet tibi propter pestilentem illius terrae aerem.

² Doni (1667: 87); Eustachius (1608: 56–7, 89). North (1896: 24, 100). The early medieval life of St. Barbatus, Bishop of Beneventum, identified fevers with paganism and sin: peccatorum febribus (fevers of sinners) ( vita Sancti Barbati Episcopi Beneventani, iii, ed. Waitz (1878), Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum, ii. 557–8).

Apulia

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Lago di

Lesina

Lago di

Vieste

Varano

Teanum

P RO M O N TO R I O

Apulum

D E L G A RG A N O

A d r i a t i c

Manfredonia

TAVO L I E R E

S e a

Lucera

Arpi

Foggia

SALINE

Margherita di Savoia

Salpi

Herdonia

Trinitapoli

Cannae

A P U L I A Cerignola

Andria

Canosa di Puglia

Ascoli Satriano

Lavello

Melfi

N

Map 7. Salpi and Apulia

sequently we may need to look no further to explain the significance to the Romans of Beneventum’s original name which was transcribed into Latin as Maleventum (‘bad wind’), the name changed by the Romans to the more auspicious Beneventum (‘good wind’) when they founded a colony there in 268 .³ The demography of malaria was widely distributed in the southern half of Italy as well as in western central Italy. Doni noted that acute ³ Livy 9.27.14; Pliny, NH 3.11.105; Velleius Paterculus, 1.14.7; Procopius, BG 1.15.4–7

attributed its original name to a stormy wind from Dalmatia which blew over the area.

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Apulia

fevers caused thousands of deaths in Apulia and Campania in 1607, a very hot, dry year.⁴

There is definitely evidence that this was already the situation in classical times. The marsh of Salpi ( Salpina palus) in Apulia, close to Old Salpi (or Salapia) on the gulf of Manfredonia on the Adriatic coast of Italy, was notorious for malaria.⁵ During the Second Punic War Hannibal decided that Salpi, which he held for six years, was a good place in which to spend the winter, because of the lush pastures for his cavalry. Hannibal was too smart to spend the summer in an area subject to intense malaria if he could avoid it.⁶ The landscape changes which affected the vicinity of the old town, as described by Delano Smith, were typical of those undergone by coastal habitats which were being seized by malaria.⁷

The Lago di Marana adjoining the old town at Torretta dei Monaci was a small shallow lagoon originally connected to the much larger Lago Salpi on its southern side. Lago Salpi was a large lake running parallel to the sea but separated from it by a narrow strip of land, like the Lago di Paola and the other lakes along the Tyrrhenian coast next to the Pontine Marshes. To the north of Salpi lay Lago Salso, a large lake which was drained under Mussolini in the 1930s. The presence of these large lakes suggests that at least some parts of Apulia were wetter during the Iron Age than they are today. Some palaeobotanical research has reached this conclusion for Arpi, which was linked to Salpi by a waterway.⁸ The Lago di Marana next to Old Salpi was cut off from Lago Salpi by alluviation caused by intensive farming and gradually turned into marshes.

Once the marshes were cut off from the sea they were generally filled with fresh water, but their history created slightly brackish conditions. The whole region, from Manfredonia in the north to Margherita di Savoia in the south, is responsible for about three-quarters of modern Italy’s total salt production. Inevitably it was highly attractive for those species of mosquito which transmit malaria and are tolerant of brackish conditions. Di Biase pointed out that evidence for salt production in the area goes back to Roman times, as shown by the name Salinis given to Salpi in the ⁴ Doni (1667: 177–8).

⁵ Lucan, de bello civili 377 mentioned the Salpina palus, as did Vibius Sequester (see Ch. 6

above).

⁶ Livy 24.20.15, cf. 26.38.6–14 and Valerius Maximus 3.8. ext.1, on Hannibal.

⁷ Delano Smith (1978: 82–91, 154–7, 165–9).

⁸ Sanpaolo (1995: 85–7) on the palaeobotany of Arpi.

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Roman itineraries.This is yet another illustration of the fact that the areas infested by malaria were frequently areas of great economic importance. The historical geography of the entire region recalls Vitruvius’ comments, with reference to the Pontine Marshes, about the unhealthiness of coastal marshes which were or became isolated from the sea. Vitruvius explicitly states that Old Salpi, a once prosperous Daunian city located in a grain-exporting region, according to Strabo, was abandoned because it was unhealthy.

The landscape changes described by Delano Smith, a geographer, are extremely important for understanding the creation of suitable breeding habitats for Anopheles mosquitoes leading to intense malaria:⁹

The town of Old Salpi in Apulia . . . had been established in places like that [sc. stagnant marshes cut off from the sea], as a result of which the inhabitants were ill every year, until they eventually approached M.

Hostilius with a request in public and persuaded him to search for and choose a suitable place for the transfer of their fortified town. He did not delay, but immediately after making very shrewd investigations he bought some land in a healthy location near the sea and asked the Senate and Roman people for permission to transfer the town . . . he cut a channel to link a lake to the sea and made a harbour from the lake for the town. Consequently the people of Salpi now live in a