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

people there are so many cases of lethargy and fever that hardly a single free man or a single slave remains, who is fit for any office or ministry. However, from neighbouring towns I receive reports every day of the carnage of death.⁷²

⁷¹ Gregory himself spoke of suffering prolonged slow fevers (in addition to other health problems) in the prefatory letter to his commentary on Job, ed. Migne (1844–90), patrologia Latina, lxxv, col. 515, ch. 5: Multa quippe annorum iam curricula devolvuntur, quod crebris viscerum doloribus crucior, horis momentisque omnibus fracta stomachi virtute lassesco, lentis quidem, sed tamen continuis febribus anhelo (Now many periods of years roll by, because I am racked by frequent pains inside my body, I am weary at all hours and times because the habit of good digestion has been broken, and I gasp for air because of fevers which are certainly slow, but nevertheless continuous.). His biographers also noted this problem, e.g. John the Deacon, Sancti Gregorii magni Vita, 1.30, ed. Migne, patrologia Latina, lxxv., col. 75: cum ergo Gregorius validissimis febribus aestuaret (since Gregory was burning with very powerful fevers).

⁷² Gregorii I Papae registrum Epistolarum, ed. Ewald and Hartmann (1899), ii..232: Cotidie City of Rome

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Secondly: St. Peter Damian, Bishop of Ostia, composed a tetrastichon about Roman fever in a letter to Pope Nicholas II datable to December  1059–July 1061:

Rome, devourer of men, tames the erect necks of men:

Rome, fruitful in fevers, is very rich in the harvest of death.

The Roman fevers are faithful to a constant law.

Once they have assailed a person, they seldom leave him while he is still alive.⁷³

Thirdly: another medieval cleric, Atto, stated that scholars and men of learning were reluctant to come to Rome as teachers c.

1080 because of its unhealthiness:

I know, most esteemed brothers, that there are two reasons for your ignorance: first, the unhealthiness of the place does not allow foreigners to live here to teach you⁷⁴

The malaria of Rome was sometimes portrayed as a dragon.

Indeed the dragon was the object of a pagan Roman cult. A legend is preserved that Sylvester, the pope under whom the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the early fourth century , brought under control (but, significantly, did not kill) a terrible dragon living in a cave underneath Rome which breathed out ‘bad air’, a synonym for malaria throughout history.⁷⁵ The binding of enim in dolore deficio et mortis remedium expectando suspiro. In clero vero huius urbis et populo tanti febrium languores inruerunt, ut paene nullus liber, nullus servus remanserit, qui esse idoneus ad aliquod officium vel ministerium possit; de vicinis autem urbibus strages nobis cotidie mortalitatis nuntiantur.

⁷³ Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Die Briefe der Deutschen Kaiserzeit, iv. Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Reindel (1988) ii. 344 (no. 72): Roma vorax hominum, domat ardua colla virorum: | Roma ferax febrium, necis est uberrima frugum. | Romanae febres stabili sunt iure fideles. | Quem semel invadunt, vix a vivente recedunt.

⁷⁴ Attonis cardinalis presbyteri Capitulare seu breviarium canonum, ed. Mai (1832), Scriptorum veterum nova collectio e vaticanibus codicibus (vi. 60), Rome: Scio, dilectissimi fratres, quod duae causae ignorantiae vestrae: una quod aegritudo loci extraneos qui vos doceant hic habitare non sinit, alia quod paupertas vos ad extranea loca ad discendum non permittit abire: quibus compellentibus causis factum est ut paenitentiale romanum apocryphum fingeretur, et rusticano stilo; ut illi qui authenticos canones nesciunt, et litteras non intel-ligunt, in his fabulis confidant; atque tali confidentia sacerdotium, quod eos non debet, arripiant; et caeci duces cum sequacibus suis cadant in foveam.

⁷⁵ Pohlkamp (1983) discussed Sylvester and the dragon. The legend of Sylvester and the dragon is portrayed in the famous thirteenth-century frescoes in the chapel of St. Sylvester in the church of Santi Quattro Martiri Coronati in Rome. Celli (1933: 101) mentions a painting of a dragon said to live in the marshes outside Rome in 1691. The dragon could be associated with diseases other than malaria, for example bubonic plague, according to Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, x.1, Paulus Diaconus, S. Gregorii Magni Vita 1.10 and John the Deacon, S. Gregorii Magni Vita, 1.36, ed. Migne (1844–98) Patrologia Latina, lxxv. cols. 46 and 78

respectively. These sources claim that a huge dragon was washed down the Tiber with

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demons, especially demons responsible for fever, to bring them under control was a common motif in late antique texts about magic. It is also now attested archaeologically. Burial no. 36 in the infant cemetery at Lugnano in Teverina was weighted down to the surface on which it lay, a crude ‘bed’ consisting of soil, stones, and tile fragments, according to the excavators, David Soren and his rubble from the city by a great flood in November  589, two months before the outbreak of a plague epidemic. However, there is no doubt that the dragon was most closely associated with malaria in Italy.

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34. Front (p. 232) and side (this page) views of the monument of Leopold II di Lorena in Piazza Dante in Grosseto, commemorating his attempts to eradicate malaria from the Maremma by bonifications in the nineteenth century. The grand duke is portrayed protecting the Maremma, depicted as a woman with her children, from the dragon of malaria.

colleagues. Stones had been placed on top of both the left and the right hands of this 2–3-year-old infant, while a tile covered its feet.

It is precisely this infant which has yielded some ancient DNA belonging to P. falciparum malaria. Its corpse was weighted down to prevent the demons of malaria from escaping and wreaking any more havoc on the population.⁷⁶

⁷⁶ Dickie (1999); D. Soren, T. Fenton, and W Birkby in Soren and Soren (1999: 508) on infant burial no. 36 at Lugnano in Teverina.

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Sylvester . . . is said to have gone down the hundred steps into its lair to face