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

Of course malaria was not confined to large estates. It could equally well occur in areas of smallholdings, as we have already seen in relation to market gardening in and around the city of Rome. Nevertheless malaria was strongly associated with large estates. Leading Italian writers such as Francesco Ciccotti and Giustino Fortunato attributed to malaria a considerable role in explaining the underdevelopment in recent times of the Mezzogiorno, relative to northern Italy.¹⁶ The role of malaria is a constant undercurrent to the story of Carlo Levi’s Christ stopped at Eboli, one of the most famous works of modern Italian literature. Eboli overlooks the intensely malarious plain in which ancient Paestum was situated. The close link between malaria, large estates, agricultural wage labour, and demographic regimes characterized by both high mortality and high fertility has been reaffirmed by the most recent research in Italian historical demography.¹⁷ Similarly in Spain a very close correlation has been noticed between the distribution of malaria and of latifundios.¹⁸ It cannot be stressed too much that there was a universal consensus among people who studied the situation in Lazio in the early modern period that the presence of endemic malaria made intensive agriculture virtually impossible in practice, however desirable it might have been in theory. The evidence from the Roman agronomists suggests that the situation was fundamentally exactly the same in antiquity by the time of the Late Republic. Perhaps the simplest way of demonstrating this is to juxtapose quotations from the ancient Roman agronomists with quotations from modern writers to show the similarity between conditions in antiquity and conditions in the early modern period, before the eradication of malaria:

Spring-sown wheat remained essentially confined to limited areas. It was considered impossible to cultivate it in a large part of the domains of the Papal State, in the Roman Campagna and the Pontine Marshes, because it reached maturity in the season in which the air was more pestilential and in which it was liable to cereal rust.¹⁹

significance of the book by Antonio Monti (1941), an account of the work of Luigi Torelli, in relation to the mentality of large landowners and malaria. Unfortunately it was not possible to obtain a copy of this rare book.

¹⁶ Snowden (1999).

¹⁷ Del Panta (1989: 28) on the latifundia of Grosseto, also Agricoltura e società (1980); Arlacchi (1983, chapter 3) on the latifundia of the Crotonese; del Panta (1996, 141); Corti (1984, 643–7).

¹⁸ Beauchamp (1988: 258–9).

¹⁹ De Felice (1965: 55): Il grano marzajolo rimase sostanzialmente circoscritto a limitate superfici, Roman Campagna

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However, the most profitable land is land which is healthier than elsewhere, since there the proceeds are certain: however, on land that is pestilential, no matter how fertile it is, disaster does not allow the farmer to achieve a profit. For, where the reckoning is with death, not only is the profit uncertain there, but even the lives of the farmers are at risk. In an unhealthy location farming is a lottery in which the life and possessions of the owner are in danger.²⁰

Those cultures, for instance viticulture, which require repeated care and labour even in the summer, can only be practised in localities with healthy air that are consequently somewhat elevated. Consequently in the Alban hills, very rich in vineyards, the curious phenomenon is observed that the lower limit of these vineyards signals almost exactly the upper limit of malaria, reigning in lower regions.²¹

In a pestilential locality, where work is impossible in summer, the honour-able master will add a fourth part to the fee for the work [sc. the construction of a villa].²²

The rarity of maize cultivation in the plains is explained readily when one remembers, on the one hand, the persistent aridity which usually prevails in the summer, and then the labour shortage, owing to malaria, which is observed in the season in which the vegetative growth of this plant occurs.²³

However, I have a general principle, like a witness, which should be declared more frequently. M. Atilius Regulus, a very renowned general during the First Punic War, is said to have enunciated this rule: that not even the most fertile estate should be bought if it is unhealthy . . . Atilius gave this opinion to farmers in his own time with greater authority as it ritenendosi impossible coltivarlo in gran parte del Patrimonio, dell’Agro e delle Palude Pontine dato che giungeva a maturazione nella stagione in cui l’aria vi era più ‘pestilenziale’ ed era pertanto soggetto alla ‘ruggine’.

²⁰ Varro, RR 1.4.3: Utilissimus autem is ager qui salubrior est quam alii, quod ibi fructus certus: contra in pestilenti calamitas, quamvis in feraci agro, colonum ad fructus pervenire non patitur. Etenim ubi ratio cum orco habetur, ibi non modo fructus est incertus, sed etiam colentium vita. Quare ubi salubritas non est, cultura non aliud est atque alea domini vitae ac rei familiaris.

²¹ F. Giordano, Condizioni topografiche e fisiche. . . in Monografia (1881: lix): Talune di queste colture, come per esempio la vite, che esige ripetuta cura e lavorazione anche nella state, non può praticarsi che nei siti di aria sana e perciò alquanto elevati, e perciò vedesi il curioso fenomeno dei monti Albani ricchissimi di vigneti, dove il limite inferiore di questi segna presso a poco il limite della malaria regnante nelle regioni inferiori.

²² Cato, de agr. 14.5: Loco pestilenti, ubi aestate fieri non potest, bono domino pars quarta preti accedat.

²³ Author of the chapter entitled Sulle condizioni dell’agricoltura e pastorizia della provincia di Roma, in Monografia (1881: ci): La scarsezza di cultura del granturco nelle pianure si spiega agevolmente quando si pensa da un lato, alla insistente siccità che non di rado vi domina nella estate, e poi al difetto di braccia che si verifica, a cagione della malaria, nella stagione appunto in cui si svolgono le fasi vegetative di questa pianta.

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Roman Campagna

was based on experience, for works of history say he farmed a tract of land in Pupinia