Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy

by Robert Sallares

  ³⁰ Cicero, de fato 4 ed. Giomini (1975): ad Chrysippi laqueos revertamur; cui quidem primum de ipsa contagione rerum respondeamus, reliqua postea persequemur. Inter locorum naturas quantum intersit videmus; alios esse salubris, alios pestilentis.

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  It was always possible to find localities which were free from malaria, especially on raised land. Just to give one small example here, a nineteenth-century travel handbook noted that on the Via Cassia leading north from Rome the first inn after Veii, Baccano near the Lago di Bracciano, was situated in an unhealthy area, but the next inn along the road, Monterosi, was healthy because of its higher altitude (276 metres above sea level).³¹ Sometimes modern historians use the localized distribution of malaria to argue that because it did not occur everywhere it was not very important.

  Brunt, for example, advocated this view, while accepting that malaria had probably always been present in Italy. The error in this view is that it overlooks the fact that the localities where malaria occurred were the localities with the best agricultural land, i.e.

  valleys and well-watered lowlands. Consequently malaria had a much greater impact on the economy than its localized distribution might suggest. In the early modern period about one-sixth of the area of the Roman Campagna was regarded as being good, fertile farmland. It was naturally located in the lowlands. That means that malaria only had to cover that same sixth of the Roman Campagna to devastate the agricultural economy. Under those circumstances the type of animal husbandry described by Pliny the Younger along the road from Rome to Laurentum was logically the best way of exploiting the land.

  It is impossible to consider here in detail the question of latifundia in relation to the results of archaeological field surveys in Italy, beyond recalling briefly the well known results of the surveys conducted by the British School at Rome which revealed a decline in the number of occupied sites of about 80% from the first to the fifth century  in southern Etruria.³² Field surveys in various other parts of Italy have shown that the countryside was certainly not deserted in the last two centuries , following the devastation which it is frequently assumed that Hannibal caused during the Second Punic War. However, the archaeological evidence on its own has and always will have, two fundamental weaknesses. First, it cannot tell us anything about the nature of land ownership, for example about the possibility of multiple sites being owned by a single owner. Secondly, the field surveys cannot tell us anything about the composition of the labour force (i.e. whether farms were ³¹ Blewitt (1843: 246).

  ³² Potter (1979: 138–46), cf. Liverani (1984).

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  worked by owner-occupiers, tenants, or slaves). For that we need documentary evidence.

  Consequently it is still worth paying attention to Brunt’s treatment of the problem of ‘the desolation of Italy’ ( Italiae solitudo) as it appears in literary sources for the Republican period, even though it was written before archaeological field surveys became fashion-able. He concluded that ‘the existence of so many small towns in south Etruria is a strong indication that the free agricultural population held out better there than in some other parts of Italy’.³³

  Even if this is true for the Republic, the field surveys suggest a steady decline in south Etruria during the Empire. Most of the major towns of the region in antiquity were eventually either abandoned or moved to new sites. With respect to Latium Brunt’s conclusion was rather different: the population was mainly composed of slaves on ‘a land of estates owned by the few’.³⁴ If Brunt’s conclusion about Latium is correct, it shows that the system of land ownership characteristically associated with malaria in recent periods of history was already in place in Latium by the end of the Republic. It also raises another fundamental question about the agricultural system in Latium in the later stages of the Republic, namely the question of the nature of the agricultural labour force.

  The population of the city of Rome, perhaps 750,000–1,000,000

  people by the end of the first century , required very large quantities of food to sustain itself. Latium was renowned in particular for its wines, especially Caecuban wine, the product of a variety of vine which was very well adapted to the wet environmental conditions of the coastal region in the vicinity of modern Fondi.³⁵ The existence of such varieties of domesticated vine is not at all surprising when one recalls, from the descriptions of the Pontine forest quoted earlier (Ch. 6 above), that wild vines flourished in the Pontine Marshes. Setian wine, the favourite of the emperor Augustus, was also very highly rated. The example of Setian wine is particularly ³³ Brunt (1987: 353).

  ³⁴ Brunt (1987: 50).

  ³⁵ The Caecuban vine was actually cultivated in marshes: Pliny, NH 14.8.61: in palustribus populetis sinu Amyclano (in marshy poplar woods on the bay of Amyclae), cf. Theophrastus HP

  4.1.1 for poplars liking marshy ground; Martial, Epig. 13.115: Caecuba Fundanis generosa cocuntur Amyclis, vitis et in media nata palude viret (The generous Caecuban vine is ripened at Amyclae near Fondi, and the green vine is born in the middle of the swamp.). Columella, RR 3.8.5 also mentions the Caecuban vine. Strabo 5.1.7.214C noted that vines grew very rapidly (with the inevitable corollary of a short life span) in the marshes of Ravenna. See Fregoni (1991: 33–5, 88–144) on the wild vine in Italy and on ancient Roman viticulture.

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  striking because Strabo singled out Setia as a pestilential district, a reputation that it retained until very recently, when Celli considered its problems at the end of the last century. Strabo described Setian wine as expensive. The price reflected the cost of producing it in the presence of endemic malaria as much as its intrinsic value.³⁶ Similarly viticulture was a major component of the agricultural system in Lazio in the early modern period, principally on the hills above the altitude reached by malaria. It was more important than olive cultivation, which was also confined to the hills but was frequently badly affected by severe frosts during the climatic conditions of the ‘Little Ice Age’. Early modern Rome was not self-sufficient in olive production even when the urban population was no more than 200,000 people or so; the same was doubtless true in antiquity.³⁷ If one assumes that the free population declined substantially during the Late Republic and the Empire, following Brunt’s conclusions, then a large slave-labour force on the land of Latium and southern Etruria is the main alternative, as Tiberius Gracchus observed on his way to Numantia. Cornell has recently summarized the population history of Latium as follows: The mass emigration of tens of thousands of poor peasant families must have led to a gradual depopulation of the old ager Romanus—a phenomenon that is in fact referred to in the sources of the classical period—and implies a radical change in the organization of landholdings and the manner of their exploitation. What must have happened is that the land was concentrated into larger holdings, which were worked by slaves who were brought in to replace the former peasant smallholders. The model therefore implies a continuous exchange of populations; poor Roman citizens were sent away to colonize lands whose original inhabitants were brought back to Roman territory as slaves. The process was complicated by a change in the relative distribution of the inhabitants in the old ager Romanus, with a greater proportion than before living in the city, and a corresponding reduction in the population of the countryside.³⁸

  As far as it goes, this analysis is quite logical, in accordance with the totality of the evidence, and perfectly plausible. The people ³⁶ Pliny, NH 14.8.61 on Setian wine, the favourite of the emperors, states that it grew above Forum Appii ( nascitur supra Forum Appi), on the hills flanking the Pontine Marshes, the Monti Lepini, cf. 16.67.173; Martial, Epig. 10.74.10–11: nec quae paludes delicata Pomptinas ex arce clivi spectat uva Setini (nor the tender grape of Setia which from the hill slope overlooks the Pontine Marshes) and 13.112; Strabo 5.3.10.237C. The Monti Lepini reach altitudes of over 1500

  metres.


  ³⁷ De Felice (1965: 70–82).

  ³⁸ Cornell (1995: 393–4).

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  who ended up in colonies in other parts of Italy must have come from somewhere. The large numbers of slaves generated by Roman imperialism, most notably those from the Second Punic War and those from Epirus in 167 , must have been put to work somewhere. However, it leaves one fundamental issue unresolved; namely, what was the motivation for Romans and Latins to leave the countryside of Latium in the first place? Cornell considered that the peasants of the ager Romanus were impoverished, had inadequate landholdings, and consequently were ready to emigrate.

  However, some parts of the old ager Romanus were potentially very good for farming (about a sixth), especially the valleys, as well as (potentially!) the coastal plains. Latium yielded everything in the way of agricultural produce, according to Strabo. It was also a well-watered lowland territory, an attribute that was rather unusual in relation to many other lowland Mediterranean regions characterized by a semi-arid climate.³⁹ In terms of its agricultural potential, Latium was surely much better off than Attica in Greece during the period of the Athenian empire in the fifth century , yet Thucydides noted that most Athenians still lived in the rural demes of Attica at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. In addition, Latium produced prize wines. Why should peasants in an agrarian society have wanted to emigrate from the district that produced the emperor Augustus’ favourite wine?

  The answer to this question is clearly given by Strabo: because the district of Setia was pestilential. Setia had very rich agricultural land, the Campi Setini. However, it was always portrayed by the ancient sources as suffering from a shortage of manpower. This complaint was already made in 379 , according to Livy.⁴⁰ In 209

   Setia (along with other communities in the region such as Circeii and Ardea) was one of the rebellious Latin colonies which informed the Roman consuls that they were unable to supply soldiers for the war against Hannibal. The long-running manpower shortage at Setia in antiquity was almost certainly a consequence of malaria, which probably had a long history in at least some corners of the Pontine region.⁴¹ Livy wrote that Roman soldiers were reluctant to ³⁹ Garnsey (1988 a) on the effects of the Mediterranean climate on agriculture.

  ⁴⁰ Livy 6.30.9: Eodem anno Setiam ipsis querentibus penuriam hominum novi coloni adscripti (In the same year new colonists were sent to Setia, whose people were complaining themselves about a shortage of manpower.).

  ⁴¹ Livy 27.9.7 and 29.15.5 for the events of 209 ; Livy 41.8.7 for the movement of Latins 250

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  return home after the siege of Capua in 342  because their land in Latium was pestilential.⁴² Dionysius of Halicarnassus also stated that one of the attractions of life in Campania for the Romans was the healthiness of the plain for farmers.⁴³ Those Roman soldiers were simply following the sort of advice already given by the consul Regulus in the third century  and by the later agronomists, namely to avoid pestilential land (see Ch. 11 below on other aspects of avoidance behaviour in relation to malaria). The unhealthiness of Latium was to remain a major aspect of its history for well over two millennia. Delumeau suggested that a recrudescence of malaria in the sixteenth century helped to explain migration from the countryside to the city of Rome in that period.⁴⁴

  The agricultural potential of their land was certainly a consideration, but it was not the only important consideration in the minds of the peasants who formed the backbone of the Roman army, when they chose to emigrate from the Latin countryside. The final proof comes from a consideration of the fortunes of colonies in different regions and environments. Inland colonies were generally very successful. However, colonies located on the coast, including both the Latin colonies of Cosa and Paestum (founded in 273 ) and several small Roman colonies (besides Graviscae), were usually unsuccessful. The case of Cosa (modern Ansedonia), whose problems have already been noted in connection with the description of the Maremma by Rutilius Namatianus (see Ch. 7 above), is particularly striking. The town occupied a fine site, but required more colonists in 197 , less than a century after its foundation. Its from the countryside of Latium to the city of Rome. The two doctors, Quinctius Theoxenus and Gaius Licinius Asclepias, who are recorded as having lived in Setia undoubtedly had plenty of work to do ( CIL X.6469 and 6471). On Setia see also Attema (1993: 87–9). Setia was a site of triumviral colonization, according to the Liber Coloniarum, i. 237–8, cf. Cicero, de lege agraria 2.25.66. Nicolai (1800: 42–3) described early modern Setia as rich in olive trees, but very rich in vines.

  ⁴² Livy 7.38.7: pestilenti et arido circa urbem solo.

  ⁴³ Dionysius Hal. 15.3.4: Kampan≤an . . . prÏß Ëg≤eian ånqr*poiß gewrgoısin år≤sthn oÇsan. Cicero, de lege agraria 2.35.96, Pliny, NH 3.5.60 and Strabo 5.4.2.242C also praised the Campanian plain. Presumably the reference is mainly to the interior plain around Capua, since there certainly were some unhealthy parts of Campania, such as the coast around Paestum. For the general idea of disease forcing people to migrate see also Seneca, ad Helviam matrem de consolatione 7.4, ed. Hermes (1905).

  ⁴⁴ Delumeau (1957: i. 220): Mais si Rome s’accroît entre 1527 et 1600 de quelque 50,000 habitants, ne serait-ce pas aussi aux dépens de la campagne voisine où les moissons diminuent et où la malaria multiplie ses ravages?

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  subsequent history was rather disjointed.⁴⁵ The failure of repeated attempts to colonize coastal areas can be attributed to malaria.

  In the Renaissance period Niccolò Machiavelli claimed that unhealthy areas could be made healthy if they were colonized by a large body of men, but this was wishful thinking on his part.⁴⁶ The healthiness of Venice is to be explained in other ways; in antiquity it was undoubtedly part of the region of anophelism without malaria which also included Ravenna (see Ch. 4. 2 above). Subsequently, however, Venice did not dry up and suffer the same environmental changes as the coast around Ravenna. Pisa’s problems have already been noted. Machiavelli understood the importance of colonization for the success of Roman imperialism in antiquity, but his argument misses the point that short-term colonization cannot ensure long-term population stability in the face of malaria. The Romans in antiquity were unable to populate in the long run those areas with the most intense malaria. The rulers of Florence in Machiavelli’s own time were no more successful, since the detailed evidence available to modern historians shows that in the late medieval and Renaissance periods the Maremma only had a population density of about 5–10 people per square kilometre, in contrast to population density levels of about 150 per square kilometre in the immediate vicinity of Florence itself. Many men were driven by dire necessity to seek seasonal employment in agriculture in the Maremma, but the bulk of those people chose not to reside permanently and work and die under the conditions of endemic malaria.⁴⁷

  Although slavery had not yet completely disappeared, the economy of Renaissance Florence was not based on mass chattel slavery. The difference in antiquity was that ancient Rome was a society with the potential for massive chattel slavery as the basis of the labour force and the slaves had no choice over where to live and die.

  ⁴⁵ On Cosa see Celuzza (1993: 227–34); Fentress (1994: 281) concluded that ‘the only “continuity” evident at Cosa is the continual difficulty of keeping its inhabitants for more than a few generations’.

  ⁴⁶ Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ii.1 ed. Carli (1927): I paesi male sani diventano sani per una moltitudine di uomini che ad un tratto gli occupi; i quali con la cultura sanifichino la terra e con i fuochi purghino l’aria; a che la natura non potrebbe mai provedere. Il che dimostra la città di Vinegia, posta in luogo paduloso e infermo: nondimeno i molti abitatori che ad un tratto vi concorsono lo renderono sano. Pisa ancora, per la malignità dell’aria, non fu mai di abitatori ripiena, se non quando Genova e le sue riviere furono dai Sar
aceni disfatte; il che fece che quelli uomini, cacciati da’ terreni patrii, ad un tratto in tanto numero vi concorsono, che feciono quella popolata e potente.

  ⁴⁷ Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber (1985: 35, 49); Pinto (1982: 44, 53–4, 66); Bueti and Corti (1998).

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  Finley emphasized how rare mass chattel slavery has been in human history: there have only been five major cases in recorded history, namely the United States, the Caribbean islands, and Brazil, after 1492, and ancient Rome and Greece (and a few other minor cases which he did not consider). There was a fundamental difference between the classical Greek city-states and the other four cases in respect of the scale of slavery, as in respect of the scale of everything else, which sets apart classical Athens from the other four. The origins of the slave trade to the western hemisphere are well known and have been described by numerous historians: the European conquerors initially tried to put the indigenous Amerindians to work, but they were decimated by diseases introduced by the colonists, as part of the Columbian exchange which has been so well described by McNeill and Crosby. Subsequently there was a tremendous shortage of labour to work the plantations, a gap which was filled by importations of Negro slaves from Africa, who were more resistant to European diseases than the Amerindians but nevertheless suffered extremely high mortality rates, and who had the virtue (for their buyers) of being cheap and readily available in large numbers. Benjamin Franklin in 1751 concluded that the reason why estate owners in the United States turned to slave labour was simply a question of labour costs: imported slaves were much cheaper than hired labour from the thinly scattered white population.