These sources and numerous others show that malaria remained a major problem in and around Rome throughout the medieval and early modern periods.
First, Pope Gregory the Great, who himself suffered from malaria, mentioned a great epidemic of fever at Rome in August
599. He states that there were reports every day of high mortality in neighbouring towns (and also reports of plague epidemics in the eastern Mediterranean):⁷¹
For every day I am weak and in pain and sigh, waiting for the remedy of death. Assuredly among the clergy of this city and 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 the deadly dragon of Rome, a creature of enormous size, hiding in the secret cave of the crypt. It was causing terrible problems for the miserable population, corrupting the air with its poisonous jaws and pestilential breath, and the pagans were deceived into offering the filthy sacrifices of frenzied purification to calm the madness of its fury. Sylvester disciplined for ever the dragon with the punishment of eternal vengeance by restrain-ing it with a collar from which it cannot escape.⁷⁷
The earliest dragon cult in ancient Latium seems to have been located in Lanuvium. From there it was transferred to Rome sometime.⁷⁸ In the medieval period the swamps at Maccarese near Ostia were supposedly the home of a dragon, which was killed by a knight from the Anguillara family, to which the territory was awarded as a result. Tomassetti linked this legend to attempts at bonifications to improve health in the area.⁷⁹ A dragon that represents malaria is still visible today on the marble monument in Piazza Dante in Grosseto. It was carved by Luigi Magi in 1846. This monument commemorates the efforts of Leopold II di Lorena ‘Canapone’, the last grand duke of Tuscany, to rescue the Maremma and its inhabitants from the scourge of malaria.⁸⁰ Similar monuments were constructed in other towns that were affected by malaria. For example, Cisterna erected in its main square a sculpture by Ernesto Biondi to commemorate the triumph of health over disease. It won the grand prix at the Paris Exhibition of 1900.⁸¹
⁷⁷ St. Aldhelm, de laudibus virginitatis, x
xv, ed. J. A. Giles (1844): Sancti Aldhelmi opera quae extant: Sylvester . . . ad letiferum Romae draconem in clandestino cryptae spelaeo latitantem, qui virulentis faucibus et pestifero spiritus anhelitu aethera corrumpens miserum populum atrociter vexabat, per centenos latebrarum gradus introrsum descendisse fertur, et eandem mirae magnitudinis bestiam, cui paganorum decepta gentilitas ad sedandam furoris vesaniam, fanaticae lustrationis spurcalia thurificabat, inextricabili collario constrictam perpetuae ultionis animadversione perenniter mulctavit, et Romam fallacis idololatriae cultricem a funesto, victimarum ritu Evangelicis assertionibus et segnis pariter coruscantibus correxit.
⁷⁸ Aelian, On animals 11.16; Propertius, Elegies 4.8.3–14, ed. Fedeli (1984). There is no sign of an association with disease in these texts. The dragon cult is presented as an agricultural fertility rite by Propertius.
⁷⁹ Tomassetti (1910: ii. 497). A modern painting in the church of St. George in Maccarese portrays the saint slaying a dragon. Levi (1945: 96–7) and Douglas (1955: 102–7) discussed dragons in Lucania and Calabria, while Horden (1992) considered the dragon motif in relation to malaria in the lives of the saints in early medieval France.
⁸⁰ Santi (1996: 126).
⁸¹ Tomassetti (1910: ii. 390–1).
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The Roman Campagna
The countryside immediately surrounding the city of Rome, the Campagna Romana, requires attention now. In view of the warm climate for most of the period of the Roman Empire (see Ch. 4. 5
above), malaria was probably even more widespread then than it was in the early modern period, when Giordano described the region as follows:
The Tiber and its tributaries, which flow across it sunk into deep channels, have cut into the uneven surface of this plain, which is almost everywhere uncultivated, with only natural pastures, bare of trees and property, the home of malaria in summer.¹
Tomassetti, an expert on the Roman Campagna, wrote about its fauna as follows:
The very common fly ( Musca domestica) and the mosquito ( Culex pipiens) . . .
the one by day, the other by night, are the greatest nuisance to visitors to the Roman Campagna in summer.²
Even in the vicinity of Rome as recently as the nineteenth century, it could be difficult to obtain precise and trustworthy information about the distribution of malaria. Tommasi-Crudeli, for example, observed that there were many reasons for people to tell lies about malaria:
Sometimes they imagine that you are a collector of taxes, and tell you that a place is pestiferous, although it is not, in order that you may not be induced to raise their assessment. At other times they take you for a would-be purchaser, and assert that the place is healthy, even when it is extremely malarious, in order to induce you to buy. Cases are known in ¹ F. Giordano, chapter entitled Condizioni topografiche e fisiche di Roma e Campagna Romana in Monografia (1881: p. ii): Questa planizie di superficie ineguale, incisa dal Tevere e dai suoi influenti che vi scorrono incassati entro profondi solchi, presentasi quasi ovunque incolta ed a soli pascoli naturali, nuda d’al-beri e di cose, sede di mal’aria in estate.
² Tomassetti (1910: i. 16): La volgarissima mosca (Musca domestica) e la zanzara (Culex pipiens) . . .
l’una di giorno, l’altra di notte, formano la più grande molestia di chi frequenta in estate la campagna romana.
Blewitt (1843: 534) mentioned the abundance of mosquitoes along the direct road from Rome to Anzio (ancient Antium).
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which they will tell you a falsehood, rather than speak the truth, for fear of ruining their trade.³
In the same decade in which he wrote the original Italian version of his book, the Italian government in fact made a great effort to gather information about the distribution and frequency of malaria in every district of Italy for the monumental Carta della malaria dell’
Italia, inspired by Luigi Torelli. This map, completed in 1882, was apparently so large and detailed that it would cover a town square if all the sheets were laid out on the ground side by side. After considering all the difficulties, Tommasi-Crudeli went on to reach the following conclusion:
We must admit that malaria prevails throughout the whole extent of the Campagna, although there are abundant reasons for believing that some localities are much more malarious than others, and that some are entirely free from it.
Obviously it is far more difficult to obtain information now regarding the situation two thousand years ago than it was to assess the then current situation little more than a hundred years ago.
However, bearing in mind the evidence of ancient medical writers that malaria was frequent within the city of Rome itself and the statements of Cicero and Livy, implying that Rome was situated in an unhealthy region, the balance of probability is that many of the low lying rural districts of Latium and southern Etruria were also affected by malaria during the time of the Roman Empire just as they were in more recent times. It is worth describing some features of the ecology of Latium in Roman times to show how it fits this suggestion. Pliny the Younger described the countryside along the roads from Rome to Laurentum in the first century . These roads passed through woods, which provided plenty of firewood (though Pliny does not mention timber good enough for construction purposes in Rome), and extensive meadows where there were numerous flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and horses which were driven down from the mountains in winter to pasture on the well-watered meadows overlying the very high water table. Indeed these pastures were so rich that elephants were kept in the region between Laurentum and Ardea in readiness for the circuses in Rome.⁴
³ Tommasi-Crudeli (1892: 86), cf. Levi (1945: 32, 74) on taxes and lies.
⁴ Pliny, Ep.2.17.3; the inscription CIL VI.8583, procuratoris Laurento ad elephantos (procurator [ cont. on p. 238]
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35. Luigi Torelli’s Carta della malaria dell’Italia, completed in 1882. Geographical areas with P. falciparum malaria have dark shading, areas with only P. vivax malaria have light shading.
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These meadows were natural meadows, not artificial ones, just as in Lazio in the nineteenth century, since the Roman agronomists in antiquity did not have any conception of the complicated crop rotation systems required for artificial meadows. In any case the forage crops of artificial meadow systems, such as lucerne, grew naturally in such a well-watered (in winter) environment. According to the early modern Roman agronomists stall feeding of stabled animals was disliked in Lazio because it was felt that animals tended to become infected with diseases if they were not allowed to roam freely. In 1813 33% of the total value of all agricultural production in Lazio came from animal husbandry. This demonstrates in quantitative terms the importance of animal husbandry to the agricultural economy, and explains why the élite in Rome throughout history took such an interest in it.⁵ In the sixth century
Procopius noted that the invading Gothic army chose to set up a camp at Regata near Terracina because the Goths observed that the lush Pontine plain was very suitable for feeding the horses of their cavalry.⁶
However, the agricultural system of Latium in antiquity was one in which animal husbandry was not integrated with arable farming. Pliny took transhumance for granted as the basic pattern of animal husbandry. This traditional system continued from antiquity up to and throughout the nineteenth century. It can be inferred that shepherds in antiquity were as vulnerable to infection with malaria when they came down from the mountains in late autumn as Marchiafava noted they were in the nineteenth century. The poem Culex in the Appendix Vergiliana tells a fable about a shepherd sleeping out in the countryside who was about to be attacked by a poisonous snake when he was woken up and saved by a mosquito biting him. The ungrateful shepherd killed the mosquito, which descended to the underworld and then reappeared to him in a for elephants at Laurentum) and Juvenal, Sat. 12.102–5 record the presence of elephants in this region.
⁵ Sallares (1991: 382–4) on meadows in antiquity; De Felice (1965: 38–40, 89–104) on meadows and animal husbandry in early modern Lazio; Gabba & Pasquinucci (1979) and Garnsey (1988 b) on antiquity.
⁶ Procopius, BG 1.11.1 (cf. 2.3.10–11 for the vicinity of Rome itself ). Nicolai (1800: 42–3) discussed eighteenth-century opinions on the location of Regata or Regeta. He noted Cluverius’ textual emendation of the name to Pineta and Olstenius’ emendation to Trajecta, but followed Corradini’s view that Regata was situated between Forum Appii and ad Medias along the Via Appia.
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dream.⁷ This tale evidently lacks realism in more ways than one. It shows no awareness at all of the danger of mosquito bites and the link between mosquitoes and malaria. Nevertheless it is quite realistic in suggesting that being bitten by mosquitoes was an occupa-tional hazard for shepherds in the Roman Campagna.
However, the question of animal husbandry and agricultural systems has a wider significance in relation to malaria. It was noted earlier that species of mosquito may be anthropophilic, or zoophilic, or indifferent with regard to their choice of prey. In the Campagna Romana in the 1930s the important malaria vector species A. labranchiae certainly occurred inland but was most abundant along the coast, from Palidoro to Ardea. Its larvae seemed to require a certain degree of salinity in the water. Fluctuations in the size of populations of A. labranchiae were correlated with fluctuations in the frequency of malaria. Away from the coast in the 1930s the zoophilic A. typicus was commoner, while another zoophilic species, A. messeae, was very rare. Zoophilic female mosquitoes prefer cattle, but may also dine on pigs or horses instead. They are not so keen on sheep, whose woolly fleece provides protection from mosquito bites. Consequently a system of arable farming, using cattle to pull the plough, may sometimes deviate some species of mosquitoes away from humans towards cattle, especially if fodder crops alternate with cereals, increasing the number of animals that can be kept on the arable farm in summer, the crucial time of the year.⁸ This raises many important questions about the nature of ancient agriculture in Mediterranean-climate regions, such as the question of the prevalence or otherwise of fallow in arable farming, or that of the scale of cultivation of fodder crops, or of the extent to which animals were actually maintained permanently on farms.
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