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

stark illustrations of malaria’s capabilities in that part of the world. A misguided drainage scheme in the late eighteenth century, which blocked a river and in so doing created a large marsh right underneath the town, introduced malaria to Sermoneta (257 metres above sea level), which had previously been free of it. That brought about a substantial reduction of 50% or more in the population of the town, which fluctuated considerably over the decades. That is the likely scale of the collapse of the free population in the Pontine region after the fourth century . The Amsterdam field survey suggested that there was no subsequent general recovery in Roman times, even if Cethegus was responsible for the handful of settlements which sprung up sometime along the Via Appia: namely ad Medias, Tres Tabernae, Tres Pontium, and Forum Appii.³⁹ Consequently our conclusion must be that Cethegus’ operations were a complete failure, like numerous other ancient (and more recent) drainage schemes. In fact North made the correct interpretation of the value of Cethegus’

work as long ago as 1896, without the benefit of the archaeological data which have only become available in the last few years. He made the acute observation that if Cethegus’ work was completed in such a short space of time as a single year, during his consulship in 160 , it could not have been serious. Drainage is not a trivial business. In fact this interpretation had already been debated by the eighteenth-century historians. Nicolai discussed Corradini’s theory that Cethegus carried out his drainage works not in his official capacity as consul, but as a private individual (as Decius did in late antiquity—see below). He proposed this hypothesis, which requires an unnatural, metaphorical interpretation of the text of the summary of Livy, in order to free Cethegus from the temporal constraints of a consulship lasting a single year. Since the objective of Corradini’s line of argument was to reach a conclusion, namely that Cethegus’ works were a great success, for which there is no evidence nor any probability, his argument is unnecessary.⁴⁰

³⁹ C. W. Koot in Voorips et al. (1991: 125–30); Nicolai (1800: 38–44) on the settlements along the Via Appia. North (1896: 24) gave data for birth–death ratios in Sermoneta for the crucial period from 1779 to 1869.

⁴⁰ North (1896: 79, 124); Nicolai (1800: 74–9).

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Pontine Marshes

The Pontine region undoubtedly suffered severely during the civil war between Marius and Sulla, described by Appian, when Norba, Setia, and many other towns in Latium and Etruria were sacked by one side or the other.Nevertheless the devastation caused by the war does not explain why there was no subsequent recovery in an extremely fertile land. For that, a different sort of explanation is required. Archaeological and literary evidence combine to suggest that the Pontine Marshes remained a very large expanse of marshland which was intensely infested with malaria for the rest of antiquity, and indeed thereafter until Mussolini, despite the attention of numerous statesmen over the intervening two thousand years. Julius Caesar presumably gained first-hand experience of the region’s problems in about 67 , while curator of the Via Appia.⁴¹

Nothing came of Caesar’s subsequent plan, noted earlier (Ch. 1

above), to drain the Pontine Marshes. Anthony tried to revive it after his death.⁴² A scholiast on a corrupt line of Horace claims that Augustus also drained the Pontine Marshes and made them productive for agriculture.⁴³ The evidence for this particular attempt at drainage operations is very thin, but if it did take place it was certainly not fruitful, since contemporary sources leave no doubt that malaria was endemic at that time. Strabo’s testimony confirms the evidence of Vitruvius on the Pontine Marshes quoted earlier: The whole of [Latium] is prosperous and produces everything apart from a few districts along the coast, the marshy and unhealthy areas, such as the territory of Ardea⁴⁴ and the land between Antium and Lanuvium⁴⁵ as far ⁴¹ Plutarch, Julius Caesar 5.9, ed. Ziegler (1971): Ødoı t[ß !pp≤aß åpodeicqe≥ß ƒpimelht¶ß p3mpolla cr&mata prosan3lwse t0n ‰autoı (After being appointed curator of the Appian Way he spent a lot of his own money on it.).

⁴² Cassius Dio 45.9.1: c*ran £llhn te poll¶n ka≥ t¶n ƒn to∏ß 1lesi to∏ß Pompt≤noiß, „ß kecwsmvnoiß ‡dh ka≥ gewrge∏sqai dunamvnoiß, klhroucq[nai di¤ Louk≤ou !ntwn≤ou ådelfoı dhmarcoıntoß ƒshg&sato (Through his brother Lucius Antonius, a tribune, he proposed a law to divide and allot a lot of other land as well as the Pontine Marshes, since they had already been filled in and cultivation was possible.).

⁴³ Horace, de arte poetica 65–6, ed. Brink (1971), with his commentary ad loc; Nicolai (1800: 81–9) and de la Blanchère (1884: 102–3) on the Pontine region in the time of Augustus .

⁴⁴ Blewitt (1843: 531) described Ardea in the nineteenth century as follows: ‘the malaria is so severe in summer that the village is almost deserted’, cf. Hare (1884: ii. 278): ‘desolate and forlorn as it is now, and almost totally deserted by its plague-stricken inhabitants during the summer months, Ardea was once one of the most important as well as one of the wealthiest cities of Latium’ (according to Dionyisius Hal. AR 4.64.1 and Virgil, Aeneid 7.411–13), cf.

Tomassetti (1910: ii, 446–61, esp. 447). Seneca, Epist. Mor. 105.1 hinted at the unhealthiness of Ardea during the Roman Empire, cf. Martial 4.60.

⁴⁵ Blewitt (1843: 531) described Pratica di Mare as follows: ‘the place is heavily afflicted Pontine Marshes

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as the Pontine region and some parts of the territory of Setia as well as the area around Terracina and Circeii.⁴⁶

Next are the plains, some of which adjoin Rome and its suburbs, while others lie towards the sea. Those which face the sea are less healthy, but the others are easily cultivated and decked out in the same way [sc. as the foothills of Mt. Albanus and Tusculum].⁴⁷

In interpreting these two texts, it is very important to realize that the coastal districts of Latium listed by Strabo, such as the Pontine Marshes, were not