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

here, beyond expressing general agreement with the analysis of Roman agriculture made by Ampolo and his use of comparative material from the early modern period.⁹

In contrast, a dominance of transhumant animal husbandry, especially if it concentrates on sheep, may have the effect of driving mosquitoes towards humans. In addition, a critical feature of transhumance is that the animals are absent from the parched lowlands ⁷ Marchiafava (1931: 52); Culex 182–9.

⁸ Hackett (1937: 89); Missiroli et al. (1933); Sandicchi (1942).

⁹ Ampolo (1980).

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during the summer heat, which is precisely the time of year when adult female mosquitoes are searching for prey to bite.¹⁰ In the early modern period transhumance commenced in the Pontine region in May each year, earlier than in the Roman Campagna, because of the greater intensity of malaria in the Pontine Marshes.

The system of land use along the road from Rome to Laurentum, described by Pliny the Younger, probably increased the intensity of transmission of malaria to humans in the countryside of Latium in antiquity in summer by deviating mosquitoes from animals to humans. Similarly, Bercé thought that an increasing interest in animal husbandry on the part of rich absentee landowners, to supply the urban market in Rome with meat and wool, which commanded higher prices than cereals, was correlated with an intensification of malaria in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries .

Celli had already noted the debates in the Gracchan period in the second century , concerning the appropriation of public land ( ager publicus) by rich Romans and its exploitation for animal husbandry, which cannot be considered in detail here. Suffice it to say that this development was correlated with the spread of malaria in central and southern Italy, although it is difficult to specify cause and effect. The history and consequences for the Roman Republic of the Gracchan attempts at agrarian reforms are well known. It is only worth observing here that the question of appropriation of land by the rich for pastoralism was a perennial problem throughout the agrarian history of western central Italy. It was as prominent an issue in Lazio in the eighteenth century  as it was in Latium in the time of the Gracchi in the second century . The comparison with detailed accounts of the very same phenomenon in much more recent and better-documented times shows that ¹⁰ The only large domesticated animal (leaving aside the elephants) whose entire population spent the whole year in the lowlands of Latium in the pre-modern period was the water-buffalo (the source of mozzarella cheese), first mentioned in Italy by Paulus Diaconus, historia Langobardorum, iv.10, ed. G. Waitz (1878), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, xlviii ( Scriptores 7) in the late sixth century : tunc primum cavalli silvatici et bubali in Italiam delati, Italiae populis miracula fuerunt (At that time wild horses and water-buffaloes were brought to Italy for the first time, marvels for the peoples of Italy). However it should be noted that there is some uncertainty about the identification of the bubali in the text of Paulus Diaconus: the aurochs is another possibility (White 1974). Toubert (1973: i. 268–9) suggested that water-buffaloes ( bubali) might have served to deviate mosquitoes away from humans. This was certainly a possibility, but since malaria remained endemic in Lazio until Mussolini’s bonifications, there were probably never enough buffaloes around to make a real difference. Hare (1884: ii. 271) described water-buffaloes in the Pontine Marshes. These animals have their own specific species of malaria, Plasmodium bubalis (Garnham (1966: 494–9) ).

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Appian’s account of the behaviour of the rich in Roman Italy has an air of realism about it.¹¹

This leads us on to the vexed issue of latifundia in Roman Italy.

Pliny claimed that the latifundia had ruined Italy.¹² Recent discussions of this question have emphasized that use of the term is restricted in extant literature to a fairly short period, the first century . Moreover it did not have any precise meaning and could be applied to property holdings of quite different sizes.¹³

However, there is no reason why the term should have had any very precise meaning; this requirement on the part of modern historians stems from an excessive preoccupation with legalistic issues. The debate should focus instead on the degree of fragmentation of large property holdings and on their internal organization. At the end of the fourth century  Olympiodorus of Thebes stated that rich Roman families drew annual monetary incomes from their properties of about four thousand pounds of gold, not to mention the wheat, wine, and other produce which was worth about a third of this amount. Even if we did not have such explicit evidence, it would be foolish to deny that there were very large property holdings in the Roman Empire, and that the immense wealth of members of the Roman élite was indeed derived from large property holdings, regardless of what term(s) were used to designate large estates.¹⁴ The argument that follows proceeds from these assumptions. In more recent times regions of Italy, like Lazio, which were dominated by malaria, were indeed characterized by very large estates, with small permanent populations in the pestilential lowlands, while the bulk of the population lived in towns on more healthy hills, or in mountainous regions. Celli summarized the situation as follows:

Large estates and malaria usually go together, because man, in certain months of the year, cannot live in intensely malarious regions where, therefore only cultivation on an extensive scale is possible, and hence the large estates.¹⁵

¹¹ Bercé (1989: 241); Celli (1933: 26–7); De Felice (1965: 92–3), Burke (1996: 2278); Appian, BC 1.7.

¹² Pliny, NH 18.7.35: latifundia perdidere Italiam.

¹³ Martin (1995).

¹⁴ Olympiodorus ap. Photius, bibliotheca, ed. Henry (1959), i. 185–6 used the rather unspecific word kt&mata for the properties in question.

¹⁵ Celli (1900: 144). See also De Clementi (1989, 45–9) for the effects of malaria on the early modern latifundia of Lazio. One of the anonymous referees pointed out the 242

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