Pontine Marshes
191
The magnificent patrician Decius . . . has promised to drain the marsh of Decemnovium, which devastates the vicinity like an enemy, by opening up channels. That notorious desolation of the age, through a long period of neglect, has established itself as a marshy sea, hostile to farming, which pours out a flood with its water that covers both arable land and quivering woods.⁵⁷
Needless to say, this attempt, like all the others until Mussolini, was a failure in the long run. Doni made the following simple comment on the Via Appia in the seventeenth century: ‘Wherever anyone rests, disease arises.’⁵⁸
⁵⁷ Cassiodorus, variae 2.32.3, ed. A. J. Fridh (1973), Corpus Christianorum Ser. Latina, xcvi: magnificus atque patricius Decius . . . paludem Decemnovii in hostis modum vicina vastantem fovearum ore patefacto promisit absorbere, illam famosam saeculi vastitatem, quam diuturnitate licentiae quoddam mare paludestre consedit cultisque locis inimicum superfundens unda diluvium terrenam gratiam silvestri pariter horrore confudit.
⁵⁸ Doni (1667: 115): ubi quis quieverit, morbus exsurgat.
7
Tuscany
The situation north of the Tiber in Etruria during the Late Republic was broadly similar to the situation south of the Tiber in Latium, which was considered in the previous chapter. A fragment of Cato provides the earliest definite evidence for endemic malaria in a specific place in western central Italy in antiquity. Of course this text simply yields a terminus ante quem, since there are no relevant earlier extant contemporary Latin sources for the Middle Republic:¹
From Pliny in the Natural History and Cato in the Origins we learn that Graviscae is unhealthy, pestilential, if unhealthy is taken to mean lacking a moderate climate, in other words a calm climate; for according to Cato Graviscae is so called because it supports bad air.²
Unfortunately the text of Pliny to which Servius also refers is not extant. The etymology that Cato offers for the name of Graviscae, the port of Tarquinia, may be worthless, like most ancient etymologies. Nevertheless the logic of Cato’s argument implies that by the time of his death in 149 Graviscae was notorious for ‘bad air’, (i.e. malaria), even though it was the location of a Roman colony which had been founded as recently as 181 . Doni noted in the ¹ Out of the sources which are usually discussed in relation to this problem, Plautus, Cur-culio 17, caruitne febris te heri vel nudiustertius (Were you free from fever yesterday or the day before?), and Terence, Hecyra 357, quid morbi est? febris. cottidiana? ita aiunt (Which disease is it?
A fever. A quotidian fever? So they say), the latter dating to 165 , may simply have been translating their Greek originals. Nevertheless these texts presuppose that a Roman audience would have understood these terms. Pliny, NH 7.49.166 states that the consul Q. Fabius Maximus lost a quartan fever in battle on 8 August 121 in the south of France, Q. Fabius Maximus consul apud flumen Isaram . . . febri quartana liberatus est in acie (The consul Q. Fabius Maximus was liberated from quartan fever in the battle at the river Isara.). Festus, 343.
30–32, ed. Lindsay (1913), followed Paulus in quoting the lines of the second century poet Lucilius, iactans me ut febris querquera (tossing me like a querquera fever) and querquera consequitur capitisque dolores (a querquera follows and headaches) , where querquera is a malarial fever accompanied by shivering.
² Cato, origines 2.17, ed. M. Chassignet (1986) [= 46 P] ap. Servius, ad Verg. Aen. 10.184: Intempestas ergo Graviscas accipimus pestilentes secundum Plinium in Naturali Historia et Catonem in Originibus, ut intempestas intellegas sine temperie, id est tranquillitate: nam ut ait Cato, ideo Graviscae dictae sunt, quod gravem aerem sustinent. Fraccaro (1928) discussed this text.
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193
N
Arezzo
Volterra
VAL DI
Siena
CHIANA
COLLINE
Cortona
METALLIFERE
Cecina
Bibbona
T U S C A N Y Lago
MAREMMA
PISANA
Trasimeno
Massa Marittima
Chiusi
MAREMMA
Populonia
Vetulonia
LACUS
Roselle
PRILIUS
MONTI
Grosseto
VOLSINI
Scansano
Elba
MONTI
Lago di
DELL’
Bolsena
UCCELLINA
Talamone
MAREMMA
MONTE
Orbetello
Vulci
Tuscania
ARGENTARIO
Cosa
(Ansedonia)
Montalto di Castro
Tarquinia
Graviscae
Civitavecchia
T y r r h e n i a n S e a
Map 5. The Maremma and Valdichiana
seventeenth century that Graviscae was located only two thousand paces from the left bank of the river Marta, one of the malarious river valleys of western central Italy. Moreover the site of the Greek trading settlement or emporion and the adjacent Roman colony is located only a few metres away from salt pans today. These saline were constructed out of a salt marsh in the nineteenth century.
Doubtless in antiquity this area of marshland provided a breeding habitat for the deadly anthropophilic species of mosquito A. labranchiae.³ In that context, the famous observations made by Tiberius ³ Livy 40.29.1; Velleius Paterculus 1.15.3; Doni (1667: 77); Gianfrotta (1981) discussed [ cont. on p. 196]
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25. Some of the
ruins of the Roman
colony founded in
181 at Graviscae,
the port of
Tarquinia. This
was the location of
the earliest endemic
malaria in mainland
Italy attested by a
contemporary
ancient source.
26. A few metres
beyond the remains
of the Roman colony
of Graviscae are the
modern saline, which
were created from
Tuscany
a salt marsh in the
nineteenth century.
This was the
breeding habitat
where A. labranchiae
flourished to create
the earliest endemic
malaria recorded for
mainland Italy in
antiquity by a
contemporary
source.
195
196
Tuscany
Gracchus in 137 on his journey through Etruria to join the Roman army at Numantia in Spain are plausible:
His brother Gaius wrote in a book that Tiberius, travelling through Etruria on his way to Numantia, saw the desolation of the countryside and observed that the farmworkers and shepherds were imported slaves and barbarians, and it was at that moment that the policy which brought them countless misfortunes entered his mind.⁴
Tiberius Gracchus’ observations of the depopulated state of southern Etruria (depopulated apart from gangs of barbarian slaves) led him to believe that it was essential, for the sake of maintaining Roman military manpower (according to Appian’s account), to introduce a scheme for the redistribution of public land ( ager publicus) which had been taken over by the rich. This scheme had fateful consequences for the stability of the Roman Republic.⁵ His observations of the state of the countryside are hardly surprising given that malaria was already endemic at Graviscae, as has just been seen. Nevertheless it is arguable that Tiberius Gracchus’ analysis of the causes of the situation, blaming it on the avarice of the rich, was inadequate. The undesirable state of coastal and southern Etruria had much deeper causes than that. It is not surprising that neither the colony of 181 �
� nor the colony or individual allotments of land subsequently made by Augustus at Graviscae prospered.⁶
The coast of Etruria continued to be severely afflicted with malaria for the rest of antiquity. There are fewer texts that refer to the state of the coastal region north of the Tiber than to the coastal areas south of the Tiber. It is well known that much of the coastal some of the archaeology of the Etruscan coast; Cristofani (1983: 122–4). In a related context Varro, de lingua latina 5.26 gave a false etymology of the word palus, marsh, cf. Traina (1988: 62–3, 73). See also Shuey (1981).
⁴ Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus 8.9, ed. Ziegler: Ø d’ ådelfÏß aÛtoı G3ioß [HRR I2 119]πn tini bibl≤8 gvgrafen, ejß Nomant≤an poreuÎmenon di¤ t[ß Turrhn≤aß tÏn Tibvrion ka≥ t¶n ƒrhm≤an t[ß c*raß Ør0nta ka≥ toŸß gewrgoıntaß ∂ ƒpeis3ktouß ka≥ barb3rouß, tÎte pr0ton ƒp≥ noın balvsqai t¶n mur≤wn kak0n £rxasan aÛto∏ß polite≤an.
⁵ 5 Appian, Civil Wars 1.7–11; Barker and Rasmussen (1998: 272–3) on T. Gracchus’ journey in 135 .
⁶ Liber coloniarum i, 220, ed. Lachmann (1967), in Die Schriften der Römischen Feldmesser: colonia Graviscos ab Augusto deduci iussa est. Harris (1971: 308) regarded this entry in the Liber Coloniarum as a mistake, but he did not consider all the evidence for the state of Graviscae in antiquity.
As a result of depopulation by malaria, Graviscae may well have been regarded in the time of Augustus as a locality that had room for fresh colonists. Virgil, Aeneid 10.184 also described Graviscae as unhealthy ( intempestaeque Graviscae).
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197
region north of the Tiber, especially the once great Etruscan city of Vulci, failed to make any significant contribution to the Roman war effort against Carthage in 205 , and was presumably incapable of being taxed.⁷ In spite of the scarcity of references, the evidence provided by Pliny the Younger is explicit enough. He reassured his friend Domitius Apollinaris that he did not intend to spend the summer at his villa at Laurentum, close to the vicus Augustanus Laurentium (a small seaside town which belonged to the emperor) and modern Castel Fusano in Latium, by the unhealthy and pestilential Tuscan coast. Instead he intended to spend the summer at another villa far inland at Tifernum in Umbria, about eight kilometres north of Tifernum Tiberinum (modern Città di Castello), in the vicinity of the very healthy Appennine mountains.⁸
The stretch of coast that Pliny regarded as unhealthy presumably included Graviscae, but it is not clear how much further north it stretched. Nevertheless Pliny’s descriptions, to which several references are made in the course of this book (especially in Ch. 11
below), of his two villas, are very important evidence for the contrasting state of the geography, hydrology, and climate of two localities in central Italy with completely different pathocoenoses and mortality regimes. The former was an example of a place in a region where malaria was endemic, while the latter was a locality where there was no malaria at all. The demographic consequences of these differences in the physical environment will be highlighted later on (see Ch. 11 below). Pliny’s response to malaria was the standard response of members of élites to pestilence throughout history: flight from the pestilential area, leaving those who had to work there for a living to their fate. Similarly in early modern England the aristocracy and the clergy took care to avoid the regions dominated by P. vivax malaria.⁹
The poet Rutilius Claudius Namatianus described the desolation of the coast of Etruria, including Graviscae, in 416: Next we see the scattered roofs of Graviscae,
Which are often oppressed by the stench of the marsh in summer; But the neighbourhood, full of woods, is verdant with dense groves And the shade of the pines wavers at the edge of the sea.
⁷ Livy 28.45.
⁸ Pliny, Epist. 5.6.2: [Laurentum] gravis et pestilens ora Tuscorum, quae per litus extenditur . . .
[Tifernum] hi procul a mari recesserunt, quin etiam Appennino, saluberrimo montium.
⁹ Dobson (1997: 298–9); Leach (2001).
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We see the old ruins, guarded by no one,
And the disintegrating walls of abandoned Cosa.
The ridiculous reason for its abandonment should not be recorded in serious
Accounts, but it would be undesirable to conceal a funny story.
The citizens are said to have been forced to move away, Abandoning their homes infested with rodents.¹⁰
Again, the observation of desolation is more convincing than the explanation of the population explosion of mice or rats offered for it in the case of the abandoned town of Cosa. True plague ( Yersinia pestis), which is transmitted principally by rat fleas, did not appear on the scene until the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the sixth century . Celli argued that there was no endemic malaria on the Tuscan coast in the early fifth century because Rutilius does not mention it. Celli’s ‘argument from silence’ is untenable because the reference in line 282 to the smell of the marshes of Graviscae in summer is a very explicit reference to ‘bad air’, (i.e. mal’aria). Consequently it is extremely probable that the depopulated condition of Graviscae in the early fifth century
was caused by malaria.¹¹ Rutilius’ words can be compared to the famous invocation of the same stretch of coast by Dante in the Divine Comedy.¹² Dante himself died of fever at Ravenna in 1321.
Again, as has already been seen in the case of Pliny the Elder, Rutilius showed no interest whatsoever in describing the natural, as opposed to the human, environment for its own sake.
The Maremma continued to be infested with malaria until modern times.¹³ Malaria generated acquired immunity in those ¹⁰ Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, de reditu suo sive Iter Gallicum, ed. Doblhofer (1972), ll.
281–90: Inde Graviscarum fastigia rara videmus, | quas premit aestivae saepe paludis odor; | Sed nemorosa viret densis vicinia lucis | pineaque extremis fluctuat umbra fretis. | Cernimus antiquas nullo custode ruinas | et desolatae moenia foeda Cosae. | Ridiculam cladis pudet inter seria causam | promere, sed risum dissim-ulare piget. | Dicuntur cives quondam migrare coacti | muribus infestos deseruisse lares.
¹¹ Celli (1933: 48–9), contrast Scullard (1967: 61); Sallares (1991: 263–71) and the papers in the forthcoming publication of the conference on the plague of Justinian at the American Academy in Rome (2001) on true plague; Dennis (1878: 194–211) described the condition of the Maremma in the nineteenth century.
¹² Dante Alighieri, La Commedìa: Inferno. Canto .1–9, ed. Lanza (1996): Non era ancor di là Nesso arrivato, | quando noi ci mettemo per un bosco | che da neun sentiero era segnato. | Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco; | non rami schietti, ma nodrosi e ’nvolti; | non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco. | Non han sì aspri sterpi né sì folti | quelle fiere selvagge che ’n odio hanno | tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi cólti.
¹³ Ciuffoletti and Guerrini (1989: 86) quoted the following traditional Italian song: Tutti mi dicon Maremma Maremma | E a me mi pare una Maremma amara | L’uccello che ci va perde la penna |
Io ci ho perduto una persona cara | Sia maledetta Maremma Maremma | Sia maledetta Maremma e chi l’ama | Sempre mi trema il cor quando ci vai | perché ho paura che non torni mai.
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27. The maintained wetland which is displayed to visitors to the Parco Naturale della Maremma, photographed at the end of July in an extremely hot summer (daytime temperature approaching 40oC). Parched vegetation is visible in the foreground, as the wetland desiccates during the summer. The national park guide told the author that the water in these wetlands is not completely fresh but brackish, although the salt content is very low. These conditions favoured those species of Anopheles mosquito which were important vectors of malaria in Italy in the past. The cattle in the background belong to the breed indigenous to the Maremma.
who survived childhood in the Maremma just as it did in the region of Ravenna (see Ch. 4. 2 above). Consequently it was possib
le for the local inhabitants to deny that malaria was a serious problem, as those questioned by the English novelist D. H. Lawrence at Montalto di Castro, near Vulci, did during his visit to Tuscany in April 1927, the healthiest time of the year. However, Lawrence was perceptive enough to understand the reality of the situation. He also noted that malaria was a severe problem for early modern archaeologists attempting to explore ancient Etruscan sites.¹⁴ One of the disease’s victims was Alessandro François, discoverer of the famous François tomb at Vulci.
As a postscript, it should not be forgotten that malaria is spreading again in developing countries, following the evolution of ¹⁴ Lawrence (1986: 121–3, 129, 132).
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resistance to antimalarial drugs by the parasites and resistance to insecticides by the mosquitoes.¹⁵ In spite of all the bonifications of the twentieth century, the potential for malaria to return to western central Italy in the future still exists. This potential does not reside so much in modern tropical strains of P. falciparum, to which Italian mosquitoes are refractory, as Coluzzi has argued, as in P. vivax.¹⁶ In August 1997 an Indian girl, who had moved to the Maremma from the Punjab and was infected with P. vivax malaria, was bitten by an Italian mosquito (probably A. labranchiae), which then transmitted the disease to an Italian woman resident in a sparsely populated area of the Maremma.¹⁷ This case shows how easily a single infected individual can spread malaria over large geographical distances. There were close political relations and commercial links between the Etruscan city-states and Carthage (i.e. North Africa) in the middle of the first millennium . This is shown by the Phoenician–Etruscan bilingual texts excavated at Pyrgi, the port of Caere (modern Cerveteri), and Aristotle’s comments on the close political relations between Carthage and the Etruscan city-states.¹⁸
Later on in Roman times North Africa was an important source of grain and other commodities for the city of Rome. Consequently it was inevitable that malaria would be introduced to central Italy in antiquity directly from Africa, as well as from southern Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, Greece, and the Near East. It became endemic in central Italy as soon as localized (and frequently anthropogenic) environmental change created suitable breeding sites for the mosquito vectors.
Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy Page 28
