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

the Saracens: ubi vel pestifero afflarentur aere vel Saracenica occiderentur rabie. In most military campaigns throughout history more soldiers died from disease than were killed by the enemy.

In another passage (4.547), on the foundation of Constantinople, William noted that the emperor Constantine sought a healthy location for his new city because he could not tolerate the Mediterranean sun, having been born in Britain. Cicero Letters to Atticus 236.2–237.2, ed. Shackleton-Bailey (1965–70); Celli (1933: 82).

¹⁷ Cicero Letters to Atticus 153.4: Apulia delecta est, inanissima pars Italiae; Varro, RR 2.1.16

and 2.9; Sanpaolo (1995: 87–91) on the archaeology of transhumance; Compatangelo-Soussignan (1994) on crop production in Apulia.

268

Apulia

malaria in the lowlands, since the animals went into the hills in summer, the time of the year when female mosquitoes are searching for prey. However, he believed that the maintenance of domestic animals in close proximity to the human agricultural population in the lowlands could reduce malaria by deviating mosquitoes away from humans.¹⁸

¹⁸ Falleroni (1921).

11

Geographical contrasts and demographic variation

The comprehensive evidence of the English parish studies discussed in Chapter 5. 4 above confirms the evidence derived from scattered local studies in Italy, such as the comparison between Grosseto and Treppio first mentioned in Chapter 1 above. Malaria, even the relatively mild P. vivax, enormously increased mortality levels, sharply reduced life expectancy at all ages, and significantly altered the age-structures of human populations in Europe in the past, wherever it became endemic. However, occurrences of malaria tended to be highly localized because of the very complicated ecological requirements of the disease, as, for example, at Old Salpi, where just by moving a few kilometres away the environment became much healthier. Consequently malaria generated enormous regional variations in demographic patterns in early modern Europe. In view of the compelling evidence from ancient sources for the endemicity in large areas of central and southern Italy of all three species of human malaria under consideration here, the comparative evidence from early modern Europe suggests that such major regional variations in demographic patterns should also have occurred in Roman Italy. There is no doubt whatsoever that that is exactly what happened. Pliny the Younger testifies to it, in a fundamental text whose neglect by those historians who have chosen to specialize in studying the demography of the ancient Roman world simply demonstrates their failure to understand the demography of Roman Italy. It is necessary to return again to the comparison of Pliny’s villas near Laurentum in Latium and near Tifernum in Umbria. Laurentum was uncomfortably close to some of the most malarious places on earth.¹ Not far away ¹ It is quite possible that there were healthy localities in the vicinity, bearing in mind the description of Laurentum in the late second century  given by Herodian 1.12.2, since the distribution of malaria was always highly localized. Nevertheless Pliny’s own comments on the gravis et pestilens ora Tuscorum (oppressive and pestilential coastal region of Tuscany) leave no doubt that Laurentum in his own time was not far from extremely unhealthy areas.

Blewitt (1843: 529) described the Laurentine forest in the nineteenth century. He noted that ‘the proper season for enjoying a residence at Castel Fusano is the spring; in summer it 270

Geographical contrasts

lay the silva Laurentina, doubtless in parts a flooded forest in winter like the Pontine forest further south along the coast, since ancient authors describe it as a large marsh, the haunt of wild boars.²

Almost certainly it was a malarial marsh. If it had not been so, Vitruvius would have cited it instead of Ravenna as a case of a healthy marsh much closer to the city of Rome than Ravenna. The presence of intense malaria explains the virtual abandonment of Laurentum during the time of the Roman Empire, a state of affairs that lasted right through to the end of the nineteenth century .³

In contrast, Tifernum, as described by Pliny, was cold and frosty in winter, with a temperate and windy climate in summer.⁴ It was too cold for the olive tree, whose geographical distribution corresponds to Mediterranean-climate regions, to grow there. It was also too cold for P. falciparum and its principal vector in Italy, A. labranchiae.

Pliny clearly observed the demographic consequences, an abundance of elderly people: Here there are many elderly people: you can see the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of young men and hear old stories and discussions about ancestors, and when you come here, you think that you have been born in another age.⁵

It has been frequently suggested by modern historians that only a small proportion of Romans would have had surviving fathers or grandfathers by the time they reached adulthood themselves; Tifernum, at least, was one Roman community where that theory is false. Undoubtedly there were numerous other communities like it, in the more mountainous parts of Italy along the Apennines.

Pliny emphasized the healthiness of Tifernum, stating that he had swarms with mosquitoes, and is not free from the suspicion of malaria’. [Aurelius Victor,]

Origo gentis Romanae 12.4, ed. Richard (1983), mentioned the duo stagna aquae salsae vicina inter se (two swamps with salty water near each other) close to the spot where Aeneas is supposed to have landed in Italy, although the reference perhaps should be to the salt marshes of Ostia instead of Laurentum (commentary in Richard’s Budé edn., pp. 149–50 n. 9), cf. Velleius Paterculus 2.19.1.

² Virgil, Aeneid 12.745, cf. 10.707–12. Quilici (1979: 65–6, 78, 81).

³ The rus vacuum (empty countryside) predicted by Lucan, de bello civili 7.394–5.

⁴ Defosse (1981) discussed the climate of Tifernum. Climate warming can be associated with an increase in the degree of climate variability, as is probably happening at the present time. Consequently the occasional occurrence of cold winters attested by Pliny does not necessarily contradict other evidence that the time of the Roman Empire as a whole was a warm period (see Ch. 4. 5 above).

⁵ Pliny, Ep. 5.6.6, ed. Schuster (1958): hinc senes