Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy by Robert Sallares (beach read .TXT) 📕

malaria is endemic, since these areas offer the best prospects for agriculture. Mediterranean wetlands are extremely productive ²¹ Livy 1.53.2, 1.56.3, 2.9.6, 2.34.3–5, 6.5.1–5, 6.6.1, 6.21.4, 7.15.12, 9.20.6; Polybius 3.22; Mommsen (1894: 447); Cancellieri (1990); Quilici Gigli (1997); Traina (1990: 22–3); De Felice (1965: 93–4) for the maintenance of very large herds of animals in winter and spring in the Pontine Marshes in the early modern period; Cornell (1995: 268, 304–9, 323–4). For the Roman colonization of Circeii see also Dionysius Hal. AR 4.63.1, 8.14.1–2, and Plutarch, Coriolanus 28. Dionysius Hal. AR 2.49.4–5 records a strange tradition of a Spartan colonization enterprise in the Pontine region in the archaic period.

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Pontine Marshes

today. For example, the agricultural zone of the Ombrone river valley within the Parco Regionale della Maremma, near Grosseto, yields some of the highest levels of agricultural productivity in Tuscany today. However, in the past in order to access this wealth it was necessary to risk one’s life. The nineteenth century Italian proverb quoted by George Dennis encapsulates the situation: ‘In the Maremma one becomes rich in a year, one dies in six months.’²²

Mammucari commented on the situation in the Roman Campagna as follows:

Between the certain death from starvation and the probable death caused by the Anopheles mosquito, the latter was almost always preferred . . . men defied death in order to make a living.²³

Similarly agricultural land in the territory of the former Pontine Marshes is extremely productive today. De Tournon noted that the depopulation of the Volscian territory must be ascribed to mal’aria because the land was extremely fertile.²⁴ He observed that the fertility of the parts of the Pontine Marshes which had been drained by Pope Pius VI in the late eighteenth century was so great that wheat could be grown several years in succession, without any need for fallow periods.²⁵ Mediterranean wetlands were surely equally potentially productive in antiquity, even though the ancient Romans and Greeks failed to figure out the best way of exploiting their economic potential, namely rice cultivation. Although very attractive for economic reasons, malaria turned many European wetlands in the past into death-traps. In early modern England agricultural labourers were constantly attracted to the marshes of Kent and Essex because of their great economic potential, but suffered very high mortality from P. vivax malaria (see Ch. 5. 4

above). Similarly in late medieval Italy there was a tendency towards migration, within the territory controlled by Florence, from the uplands towards the Maremma of Pisa and Volterra, ²² Dennis (1878: 205): in Maremma s’arricchisce in un anno, si muore in sei mesi.

²³ Mammucari (1991: 66): tra la morte certa per inedia e quella probabile a causa della zanzara anofele, quasi sempre veniva preferita quest’ultima…l’uomo sfidava la morte per guadagnarsi la vita.

²⁴ De Tournon (1831: i. 117) on the territory of ancient Corioli: Maintenant il est absolument désert . . . deux maisons délabrées que pendant l’été habitent quelques pauvres fiévreux représentent quatre villes puissants remplies d’une population vigoureuse. Ainsi sans cesse nous voyons les effets terribles du climat, car ce n’est pas la fertilité qui manque aujourd’hui à ces belles plains, où les blés les plus épais alternent avec les pâturages les plus abondans, et où succèdent le maïs, le riz, l’avoine et les fèves.

²⁵ De Tournon (1831: i. 320): Les terres à froment pourraient être semées plusieurs années de suite, tant est grande la fécondité de cette alluvion.

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which was intensely infested with malaria at the time. The attractions of marshlands for economic reasons explain why some people would always migrate there in the past in spite of their dreadful reputation for malaria. Migration can explain how areas where death rates persistently exceed birth rates remain populated.²⁶

The upshot of all this is that the fact that the region of the Pontine Marshes apparently had a flourishing agricultural economy in the fifth and early fourth centuries  does not prove that P. falciparum malaria was completely absent from the scene, since the area was very attractive for economic reasons. Unfortunately, little is heard thereafter about the Ager Pomptinus in literary sources for a period of about two centuries, a period for which detailed information would be extremely useful. Appius Claudius constructed the Via Appia from Rome through the Pontine Marshes to Capua in Campania in c.312 . Quilici Gigli observed that certain details of the road’s construction imply that cuniculi over which it passed were still operational, and Nicolai argued that the construction of the road implies that the region through which the road was to run was not already filled with marshes then. Traina’s argument that the region did not receive the name of Pomptinae paludes until the first century , having previously been called ager Pomptinus, also deserves to be noticed, although there is a shortage of relevant literature antedating the first century . Nevertheless there is no doubt that the construction of the Via Appia altered natural drainage patterns and so created suitable conditions for the spread of the mosquitoes which transmit malaria. The account of the Via Appia given by Diodorus Siculus lays stress on the cuttings and embankments constructed by Appius Claudius, features whose construction is known from modern experience to create mosquito breeding sites.²⁷ Horace observed the abundance of mosquitoes in ²⁶ Dobson (1980), (1994) and (1997); Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber (1985: 112); Sallares (1991: 22–4) on rice in antiquity.

²⁷ Diodorus Siculus 20.36.2: t[ß åf’ ‰autoı klhqe≤shß !pp≤aß Ødoı tÏ ple∏on mvroß l≤qoiß stereo∏ß katvstrwsen åpÏ <R*mhß mvcri Kap»hß, Ôntoß toı diast&matoß stad≤wn pleiÎnwn ∂ cil≤wn, ka≥ t0n tÎpwn toŸß m†n Ëpervcontaß diask3yaß, toŸß d† faragg*deiß ∂ ko≤louß ånal&mmasin åxiolÎgoiß ƒxis*saß (He paved with solid stones most of the Appian Way, which was named after him, from Rome to Capua, the distance being over a thousand stades, and he dug through elevated places and levelled the way across gullies and valleys with remarkable fills.); cf. Livy