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

placebos. St. Augustine was still well aware of the Febris cult in late antiquity.¹⁹ The cult of Fever in fact long outlived antiquity.²⁰

Religious rites and festivals directed against fever have continued to exist in various parts of Italy until modern times. For example, Ferdinando Forlivesi described how in 1889 thousands of the inhabitants of the region around Ravenna went down to the sea to bathe on 10 August, the day when the festival of St. Lorenzo was celebrated, in the belief that bathing on that holy day gave protection against malarial fevers. At Mazzara in Sicily the feast day of Salvatore on 6 August was regarded as effective against intermittent fevers.²¹

The references to the Febris cult in antiquity remind us that probably only a small minority of the population in antiquity, belonging to the educated upper class which produced most of our literary texts, actually followed the precepts and mode of reasoning of Hippocratic medicine. This conflict of different types of explanation was not merely an intellectual debate. It also spilled over into the legal and judicial domain. In the reigns of the paranoid emperors Caracalla ( 198–217), Constantius ( 337–361) and Valentinian ( 364–375) individuals were punished for wearing amulets to ward off quartan and tertian fevers, since it was adhuc unum in Palatio, alterum in area Marianorum monumentorum, tertium in summa parte Vici Longi extat, in eaque remedia quae corporibus aegrorum adnexa fuerant deferebantur. The corrupt text of Theodorus Priscianus 3, ed. Rose (1894), does not add any further significant information, however it be emended.

¹⁹ St. Augustine, de civitate Dei 3.25; Richardson (1992: 149–50); Jones (1909 a); Burke (1996: 2266–71) gives an interesting discussion of the Fever cult, referring to Dunst (1968) for a Greek parallel from Samos (perhaps influenced by Roman practice); Cornell (1995: 96–7) on the Palatine hill; P. F. Russell (1955: 79–82).

²⁰ R. Lanciani, ‘Sulle vicende edilizie di Roma’, in Monografia (1881: 8) wrote about the Fever shrine in the Vatican as follows: La chiesa di santa Maria delle Febri al vaticano, distrutta nella riedificazione della basilica, fu una delle più venerate tra i mille luoghi di culto che il Panvinio registra nel Magnus Catalogus eccles. urban. (Mai. Spicileg. IX, p. I. 79). There were similar shrines elsewhere in Italy. Pitrè (1971: 218) mentioned a church dedicated to the Madonna of Fevers outside Partanna in Sicily, cf. Corti (1984: 666–7).

²¹ Emiliani and Dalla Valle (1965: 379); Pitrè (1971: 222–3).

Ecology of malaria

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reckoned that any magic might be turned against the emperor.²²

Both Cicero and Pliny the Elder regarded the Roman custom of deifying evils such as fever as a mistake and a sign of the weakness of the human race, but it is likely that most people in ancient populations did indeed regard malaria as the work of a demon.²³

In his antiquarian book on the Roman calendar John Lydus ( c.

490–560), working at Constantinople, described malaria under the heading of September. He attributed quotidian fevers to the demon of air, tertian fevers to the demon of water, quartan fevers to the demon of earth, and envisaged a constant struggle between these entities and the demon of cold in order to explain the periodicity of malarial fevers.²⁴ There are also documentary sources from Roman Egypt describing protective charms or exorcism spells for malarial fevers. It is striking that malaria is mentioned much more ²² Lane (1999: 648–9) drew attention to these texts: Ammianus Marcellinus 19.12.14, nam siqui remedia quartanae vel doloris alterius collo gestaret . . . pronuntiatus reus capitis interibat (For if anyone wore around his neck amulets against quartan fever or any other illness . . . he was condemned to death and executed.), and 29.2.26, anum quandam simplicem intervallatis febribus mederi leni carmine consuetam, occidit ut noxiam, postquam filiam suam ipso conscio curavit adscita (He had a simple old woman, who used to cure intermittent fevers with a gentle charm, executed as a criminal, after she had been summoned with his knowledge and had treated his own daughter.), cf. 16.8.2; scriptores historiae Augustae— Caracalla 5.7: damnatis et qui remedia quartanis tertianisque collo adnexas gestarent (Some men were even condemned to death for wearing amulets against quartan and tertian fevers around their necks.). McCollough and Glazier-McDonald (1996) published a particularly fine example of a fever amulet with an Aramaic text from Sepphoris in Israel.

²³ Cicero, de natura deorum 3.63 and de legibus 2.28; Pliny, NH 2.5.15–16. Probably more representative of popular thought in antiquity is the obscure third century  (?) Christian text called the Testament of Solomon. McCown (1922: 47) in his edition described this work as follows: ‘the prime interest of the writer of the Test was medical. For him demons were what bacilli are to the modern physician, and his magical recipes and angel names are his pharmacopoeia’. Chapter 18.20 and 23 of the Testament mentions demons that bring fevers to men.

²⁴ John Lydus, liber de mensibus 4.130, ed. Wunsch (1957): Òti pleon3santoß m†n purÏß puretÏß g≤netai, åfhmerinÏß d† åvroß, trita∏oß d† datoß, tetarta∏oß d† g[ß. file∏ d†

to»twn prokat3rcein tÏ Â∏goß. ØpÎtan g¤r ËpÏ toı yucroı—ƒpeid¶ toıto ÷dion datÎß te ka≥ g[ß—t¤ ejrhmvna Ëgr¤ pacunq∫, thnikaıta ferÎmena di¤ t0n åraiwm3twn ƒxwqe∏n m†n oÛ d»natai t¤ puknÎtera, ƒmpesÎnta d† ta∏ß to»twn 1draiß s»nwsin ka≥ ql≤yin ƒrg3zetai, mvcriß #n ËpÏ toı purÏß ƒpeigÎmena tmhqvnta diacuq∫, Òper ånagka≤wß klÎnon tin¤ ka≥

seismÏn ƒmpoie∏,  d¶ p3qoß trÎmoß ka≥ yıcoß ønom3zetai (With excessive heat a fever is generated. Air produces quotidian fevers, water produces tertian fevers, and earth produces quartan fevers. However cold likes to begin before all of these. For whenever liquids are soli-dified by cold (since cold is unique to water and earth), being thicker they cannot be driven out through the interstices of the body, but falling into the bases of the interstices they created compression and pressure, until they are dissolved by fire, having being overpowered and thinned,