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

Dionysius’ account implies that other localities were not so healthy.³⁷ Evidently it is not clear to what extent his account reflects the situation in his own time, rather than the fourth century .

The doyen of Etruscologists, Massimo Pallottino, relying on the work of Toscanelli, suggested that ‘life in the marshy areas of the Maremma and of the lower Po valley cannot be explained unless malarial infection was not yet common during the golden age of Etruscan civilization; but malaria must in fact have helped to hasten the decline of many Etruscan coastal towns in late Hellenistic times’.³⁸ Vetulonia (Etruscan Vetlana or Vatulana) is as good an example of the problem as any. It flourished in the eighth to sixth centuries , but then declined ‘rapidly and completely after the beginning of the Roman period’.³⁹ Vetulonia is located close to modern Grosseto, which has already been noted as one of the most intense foci of malaria in Italy in recent times.⁴⁰ Paestum (Poseido-

³⁶ Dionysius Hal. 8.15: Ó OÛientan0n pÎliß . . . πcousa . . . tÏn Ëperke≤menon åvra kaqar0taton ka≥ prÏß Ëgie≤an ånqr*poiß £riston, oÇte 1louß plhs≤on Ôntoß, Òqen 1lkontai bare∏ß åtmo≥ ka≥ dus*deiß, oÇte potamoı tinoß yucr¤ß 1wqen ånivntoß aÇraß.

³⁷ Since settlement at Veii declined from the second half of the third century  onwards (Patterson et al. (2000) ), the area may have become less salubrious later on. It was definitely unhealthy by the early modern period. Blewitt (1843: 520) described Veii as follows: ‘the modern village of Isola is in a state of complete decay . . . the appearance of the population, which seldom exceeds 100 souls, bears sufficient evidence of the prevalence of malaria during the hot months’.

³⁸ Pallottino (1975: 182); Toscanelli (1927); contrast Heurgon (1964: 100–6) on Etruria.

The survey of the archaeological evidence for Magna Graecia by Collin-Bouffier (1994) was rather inconclusive as far as malaria is concerned, cf. Livadie (1998).

³⁹ Pallottino (1975: 117).

⁴⁰ G. Radke in Pauly-Wissowa, RE VIII A.2 (1958), cols. 1874–80 s.v. Vetulonia. Michelucci (1981) noted some construction work at Vetulonia in the third century  and inscriptions dating to the second century , proving some continued occupation of the site, and there were still some rural settlements after the decline of the urban centre (Celuzza (1993: 83–8) ).

The neighbouring city of Roselle was also considerably smaller in Roman times than it had Evolution of malaria

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nia) is an excellent example of the problem in so far as it affected the Greek cities in Italy. Paestum flourished in the sixth and fifth centuries , when its famous Doric temples were built. Subsequently, it suffered the debilitating effects of malaria, which became endemic in adjacent marshes, as Strabo describes.⁴¹ Nevertheless the site of the ancient city was not finally completely abandoned until about the ninth century , following Saracen attacks, when the settlement of Capaccio Vecchio, situated in a hilly location inland, began to flourish. This is a good example of a change in the settlement pattern in the medieval period whose ultimate cause had begun to operate at least a thousand years earlier in classical times.⁴²

In a way, the problem was even observed and discussed in antiquity. Livy raised the question of how the Volsci, coming from areas with a low population density (at least of free men) in his own time, could have raised military forces of the size attributed to them in the Roman annalistic tradition for their wars with the Romans in the fourth and fifth centuries .⁴³ It is interesting that Livy found the numerical strength of Volscian armies hard to believe, while simultaneously accepting the Roman census figures recorded by the annalists for the same period. Carmine Ampolo argued convincingly, following Beloch, that the Roman census figures for the period of the kings and the first half of the fifth century  indicate an unbelievably high population density for Latium Vetus, taking account of data for agricultural productivity, with its implications for carrying capacity, from as recently as the last century.⁴⁴ Evidently the disparity in Livy’s own time between the population of Rome and the population of the parts of Latium occupied by the Volsci was so enormous that Livy found it inconceivable that the two populations could once have been anywhere near equally matched, as the accounts of the Volscian wars available to him been during the Etruscan period (Celuzza (1993: 114) ). Eventually Roselle was abandoned in favour of Grosseto, which nevertheless suffered from malaria very early in its history in the medieval period. The Benedictine monks abandoned Grosseto because of malaria in 

1220 (Santi (1996: 132) ).

⁴¹ Strabo 5.4.13.251C: poie∏ d’ aÛt¶n ƒp≤noson potamÏß plhs≤on ejß 1lh ånaceÎmenoß (A neighbouring river flooding marshes makes the city unhealthy).

⁴² Pedley (1990: 17, 132, 163); Nutton (1971) discussed the fate of the neighbouring Greek city of Velia in relation to malaria.

⁴³ Livy 6.12.2–6, esp. 5: aut innumerabilem multitudinem liberorum capitum in eis fuisse locis quae nunc vix seminario exiguo militum relicto servitia Romana ab solitudine vindicant.

⁴⁴ Ampolo (1980: 24–30); Cornell (1995: 204–8).

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Evolution of malaria

suggested. The two sides may once have been equal, but our conclusion must be that the sizes of the armies on both sides were exaggerated by later Roman historians. To understand the demise of the Volsci, it is essential to remember one other factor, besides Roman military prowess. The Volsci were new to the area, having invaded Latium from the Appennine mountain region in the early fifth century . Since P. falciparum malaria does not occur in the mountains (see Ch. 4. 2 below), the Volsci would not have had any sort of immunity to it. Consequently as malaria spread, its effects on the Volscian population in its new lowland territory are likely to have been particularly devastating.⁴⁵ Nevertheless the problem remains of reconciling the extreme antiquity (in terms of geological time) of P. falciparum malaria with its apparent late spread in