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

why malaria was common in imperial Rome.³⁵ Nevertheless in antiquity as well the accumulation of ³² Knight (1805: 3).

³³ Carcaterra (1998: 560): per schivare le febbri malariche, si è costretti a chiudere le finestre un’ora prima dell’Ave-Maria.

³⁴ Lapi (1749: 81).

³⁵ Ammianus Marcellinus 28.4.31.

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empirical knowledge would have permitted the practice of avoidance behaviour, to try to minimize the known risks, as Herodotus shows when he describes sleeping in towers in Egypt to avoid mosquitoes (Ch. 4. 3 above). Apparently a hieroglyphic text from a temple at Denderah in Egypt advised people not to go outside their houses after the sunset in the weeks following the Nile flood.³⁶

This ancient Egyptian text recalls the statement of Athenaios that people in the Greek colony of Sybaris who wanted to avoid dying young must not see either the setting or the rising sun.³⁷ Tommasi-Crudeli, followed by W. H. S. Jones, interpreted this text as a reference to malaria in southern Italy.³⁸ This remains a possibility, since Lancisi recommended staying indoors until sunrise to avoid malaria, although the text of Athenaios could equally well simply be a reference to the legendary life of luxury enjoyed by the citizens of Sybaris.

Regardless of the correct interpretation of this text, it was indeed well known in antiquity that the average duration of life was much lower in marshy areas where malaria was endemic than in mountainous areas (like Tifernum) where it did not occur at all. The following question in the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems proves it beyond doubt:

Why do men grow old slowly in places with fresh and pure air, while those in hollow and marshy places grow old rapidly?³⁹

As a comparison, the early modern tradition about Ninfa, which was abandoned because of malaria in the seventeenth century, should be recalled:

The modern legend that an evil spirit waits in ambush for passing young adults, to make them at once grow old miserably, is a personification of the wickedness of the air, which makes the youthfulness of those who breath its exhalations decay.⁴⁰

³⁶ Capasso (1985: 304) quoted this Italian translation of the Egyptian text: non uscire di casa dopo il tramonto del sole nelle settimane che seguono l’ingrossamento del Nilo.

³⁷ Athenaios 12.520a: tÏn boulÎmenon ƒn Sub3rei m¶ prÏ mo≤raß åpoqane∏n oÇte duÎmenon oÇte ån≤sconta tÏn ~lion Ør$n de∏.

³⁸ Dunbabin (1948: 80, 216–17) emphasized the scarcity of documentary evidence with regard to the possibility of malaria in Sybaris in the archaic period.

³⁹ [Aristotle,] Problems 14.7.909b: Di¤ t≤ oÈ m†n ƒn to∏ß eÛpnÎoiß tÎpoiß bradvwß ghr3skousin, oÈ d† ƒn to∏ß ko≤loiß ka≥ ‰l*desi tacvwß.

⁴⁰ Tomassetti (1910: ii. 394): la leggenda odierna che una fata malignamente sta in agguato dei giovani che passano per farli subito miseramente invecchiare è una personificazione della malignità dell’aria, che fa intristire la giovinezza di chi ne contrae l’effluvio. See also Hadermann-Misguich (1986: 23–46, esp.

Geographical contrasts

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The prevailing view among ancient historians is to assume a fairly low life expectancy at birth across the whole of Roman Italy. Lo Cascio, following Hopkins, is a typical example of the traditional view:

Life-expectancy at birth cannot have been higher than, say, 25 for males . . . life-expectancy at birth for females must not have been higher than 25

and is likely to have been a bit lower . . . [this is] the assumption that we are entitled to make.⁴¹

The reality of Roman Italy was more subtle, more complicated, and more interesting than this bland uniformity. There were some extremely unhealthy localities,with a life expectancy at birth hover-ing around 20, in some cases no more than a few kilometres away from other localities, where life expectancy at birth may have been as high as 40 or 50.⁴² As was noted at the beginning of this book, the Italian demographers del Panta and Rettaroli found that the population of Grosseto, ravaged by malaria in the nineteenth century, did not have an age-structure corresponding to any of the main types described in the standard sets of model life-tables and based on data from modern European populations. The closest parallels instead come from African populations. African population structures in central Italy as recently as the middle of the nineteenth century ? African population structures in central Italy in antiquity? This will come as a tremendous shock to those historians who are accustomed to rely upon sets of model life-tables derived from modern European populations in their research on classical antiquity. A major flaw of the bulk of research carried out into the demography of the Roman Empire over the last thirty years has been the failure to realize that the standard sets of model life-tables do not encompass the entire universe of possibilities. In fact, they 43–5 on malaria). She noted that the eighteenth-century historian Pietro Pantanelli stated that no one in the region survived past the age of forty.

⁴¹ Lo Cascio (1994: 36).

⁴² Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber (1985: 199–201) noted the existence of populations with an older age structure in highland areas in the territory of Renaissance Florence. They explained this in terms of emigration of the young from the uplands. Although this did undoubtedly happen, numerous other studies leave no doubt that in general uplands were healthier than lowlands (see Ch. 4. 2 above). In antiquity it was believed that fertility levels were high in mountain populations in central Italy, according to [Aristotle,] peri thaumasion akousmaton 80.836a. This is highly plausible even though the author of this work had no statistical evidence whatsoever for his assertion.

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do not cover populations heavily ravaged by malaria, or tuberculosis, or smallpox, for example.⁴³ Thus the results of a general assessment of the applicability of these model life-tables to ancient populations, as called for by Hopkins in 1966, are intrinsically likely to be negative for many ancient populations, especially in southern and central Italy. It is worth recalling that Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber refrained from calculating a life-table for the population of Florence as reconstructed from the Catasto of  1427 for the following reason:

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