What Rome did not know is that she had a powerful ally inhabiting the 310 square miles of the Pontine Marshes surrounding and safeguarding the capital itself. The marshes, often referred to as the Campagna, flanking the city of Rome were home to legions of lethal mosquitoes and were the defensive equivalent to armies of men. According to a vivid description from an early Roman scholar, the Pontine “creates fear and horror. Before entering it you cover your neck and face well before the swarms of large bloodsucking insects are waiting for you in this great heat of summer, between the shade of the leaves, like animals thinking intently about their prey . . . here you find a green zone, putrid, nauseating where thousands of insects move around, where thousands of horrible marsh plants grow under a suffocating sun.” Successive invading armies from the Punic Wars to the Second World War were literally swarmed to death in the Pontine Marshes surrounding Rome.
From their origins as small, isolated enclaves of farmers and traders, Rome and Carthage eventually squared off in a grudge match for hegemony of the Mediterranean world, refereed by the mosquitoes of the Pontine Marshes. Picking up the pieces of Alexander’s mosquito-haunted dream of world domination, Carthage and Rome emerged as the heirs of empire and would vie for economic and territorial ascendency. Both Carthage and Rome, however, had humble pedigrees and isolated upbringings and remained relatively insulated from the imperial wars of the Persians and Greeks. Alexander’s quests and longing gazes toward the horizons of the unknown “ends of the world” overlooked the two burgeoning city-states of Carthage and Rome.
According to legend, Rome was founded in 753 BCE by Romulus and Remus, who, after being abandoned as infants, were nursed by a she-wolf. Upon their reaching adolescence, their natural leadership gained them a community of local followers. During a dispute over who should be sole ruler, Romulus killed his twin brother, Remus, and became the first king of Rome. Unlike the city-states of Greece, Rome expanded by assimilating outsiders into its unified legal body. The Roman willingness to extend citizenship to foreigners was unique and played a central role in the growth and governance of empire. Initially a despotic monarchy, Rome became a democratic republic in 506 BCE after a popular uprising. Guided by the aristocratic members of the Senate, the Roman Republic slowly expanded to incorporate the isthmus of Italy south of the Po River by 220 BCE.
From a few scattered huts, the people of Rome steadily fashioned a state that fought numerous wars and relocated a staggering number of citizens, slaves, and traders to secure an empire encompassing most of Europe, England, Egypt, North Africa, Turkey, the southern Caucasus, and the Mediterranean region, extending east as far as the Tigris River to its mouth at the Persian Gulf by 117 BCE. The mosquito was also caught up in the company of traveling caravans and the snaking convoys and columns of traders and migrants crisscrossing Rome’s commercial corridors and expanding domain. The vast geographic and ethnic composition of the Roman Empire, and its intersecting trade and slave routes, aided in the expansion of mosquito hunting grounds and a broader dissemination of malaria throughout Europe as far north as Scotland. For Rome to achieve the zenith of its domination, however, it would inevitably be thrust headlong into a collision course with Carthage, the only other imperialist power in the region.
Shortly before the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, seafaring Phoenician traders from modern-day Lebanon and Jordan (then Canaan) had established outposts across the Mediterranean world by 800 BCE as far west as Spain’s Atlantic coast. One such port of call was the harbor city of Carthage in Tunisia. Given its central location and its proximity to Sicily, Carthage quickly became a major center of trade and culture. Carthage was soon embroiled in a contest with the Greek city-states for control of the Mediterranean.
Following the Athenian mosquito-triggered catastrophe at Syracuse in 413 BCE, and Aristophanes’s theatrical rebuke, Lysistrata, Carthage launched its own Sicilian campaign in 397 BCE, its first major imperialistic foray. After successfully isolating Syracuse, the Carthaginians dug in along the marshy and swampy surroundings of the city and began their siege in the spring of 396 BCE. At the onset of summer, the Carthaginian force, like their Athenian predecessors, were racked by malaria, and this mission, like that of the Athenians, ended in mosquito-borne disaster. Livy, the esteemed Roman historian, recounts that the Carthaginians “perished to a man, together with their generals.” Nevertheless, the Carthaginian Empire made headway in all other colonial enterprises, encompassing much of the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, southern Spain, including Gibraltar and the Balearic Islands, Sicily (aside from Syracuse), Malta, and the coastal haunts of the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. Rome, however, was also busy carving out its own burgeoning empire, transforming from an insignificant village into a world power. The stretching territorial and economic tentacles of Rome and Carthage became entangled over trade in the Mediterranean.
The First Punic War (264–241 BCE) erupted over Sicily, where Carthage wanted to preserve its commercial leverage, while a jittery Rome wanted to limit Carthaginian power to the doorstep of Italy. Although the conflict witnessed limited ground campaigns in Sicily and North Africa, the war was primarily fought at sea. The Romans, inexperienced at naval warfare, poured vast amounts of capital, labor, and men into building a formidable navy based on a captured Carthaginian warship. Despite, or perhaps partly because of, having sacrificed over 500 ships and 250,000 men, Rome stubbornly prevailed in its first foreign campaign.
The Romans appropriated Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, and occupied the island-studded Dalmatian Coast of the Balkans. More importantly, victory and the corresponding economic boost from these new colonies whetted Rome’s appetite for further expansion and conquest. While the war had crippled the Carthaginian navy and gave Rome command of the seas, it had done little to diminish Carthage’s land forces. A revitalized and vengeful Carthaginian Empire decided to strike back. Hannibal was determined to bring the fight directly to Rome.
In the spring of 218 BCE, Hannibal departed New Carthage (Cartagena) on the southern coast of Spain and commenced his fighting advance to Italy through eastern Spain, over the Pyrenees mountain range, and across Gaul (France), reaching the western foothills of the Alps with 60,000 men and thirty-seven now legendary war elephants. His crossing of the Alps is considered one of the greatest logistical feats in military history. His army trudged forward through hostile Gallic tribal territory and unforgiving terrain at the onset of winter, with no viable supply line. Although Hannibal lost 20,000 men and all but a handful of elephants during the perilous passage over the rugged Alps, a battered, malnourished, and weathered Carthaginian force of 40,000 successfully navigated the steep decline and entered northern Italy in late November.
On the winter solstice of December 18, Hannibal’s depleted and drained army, augmented by allied Celtic Gauls and Spaniards, engaged a Roman blocking force of 42,000 men at Trebia. With careful planning and innovative field craft, Hannibal provoked and outmaneuvered the Romans into conducting futile frontal assaults, ensnaring them in indefensible positions. Outflanking the center of the Roman line, his forces swept through and annihilated the disorganized defenders, inflicting at least 28,000 casualties and scattering the survivors from the field of battle.
Following this decisive Carthaginian victory at Trebia, the emaciated elephants, horses, and skeletal troops staggered forward to encamp and pasture on “the plains which are near the Po,” providing Hannibal the “best means of reviving the spirits of his troops and restoring the men and horses to their former vigour and condition.”* In March 217 BCE, Hannibal gave marching orders to conduct a cunningly calculated and crafty operation.
The success of this campaign rested on the element of surprise, preserved and safeguarded by a deliberate and demanding advance along an unexpected route over the Apennine Mountains, followed by a four-day trudge through malarial bogs. The Carthaginians cleared the sickly swamps, but at an enormous cost. The mosquito tapped into the hea
lth and morale of the Carthaginian ranks and of their exceptionally gifted leader. Hannibal contracted malaria, losing sight in his right eye as a result of his intense fevers. By this time, the disease had already claimed the lives of his Spanish wife and son. Beleaguered but not defeated, the Carthaginian general continued his predetermined, plotted line of approach.
With his brilliantly mapped but malaria-soaked route, Hannibal executed the first recorded “turning movement” in military history by purposefully skirting and evading the Roman left flank. By sidestepping the Roman boundaries, he flipped the actual front, or direction, of the battlefield, turning the advantageous Roman defensive positions and terrain against them. The Romans were now entrapped by their own defensive perimeter in an exposed pocket or kill zone. Hannibal’s innovative preparations and strategy ensured a convincing Carthaginian victory at the Battle of Trasimene on June 21, 217 BCE. His skillful and timely use of concealment, ambush, cavalry, and flanking tactics led to the slaughter or capture of the entire Roman force of 30,000 soldiers. Following these catastrophic defeats at Trebia and Trasimene, the Romans were wary of engaging Hannibal in pitched battles, opting instead to cut off his supply lines and resources. Once more, Hannibal outmaneuvered and bested the Romans at their own strategic game.
Before attacking Rome, Hannibal took the initiative in August 216 BCE to secure much-needed provisions at Cannae, which also starved Rome of its crucial lifeline to southern stores. Although outnumbered two-to-one, Hannibal engaged the center of the Roman force of 86,000 before a timely, stunning, and beautifully executed pincer, or double-flanking, movement that enveloped the Roman legions. The Carthaginians surrounded and slaughtered the Roman army, diminishing it to the point where it ceased to be an effective fighting force.* Hannibal’s victory at Cannae is regarded as one of the most dazzling tactical feats in military history. His methods and maneuvers are still taught in military colleges across the world and have been mirrored in the battle plans and conduct of strategists and generals ever since.
German strategist and chief of the general staff Alfred von Schlieffen modeled his legendary plan for the invasion of France at the onset of the First World War “to the same plan devised by Hannibal in long forgotten times.” As German field marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps scrambled the beleaguered British forces across Libya, he wrote in his diary that “a new Cannae was being prepared.” At Stalingrad in 1942, General Friedrich Paulus, commander of the German 6th Army, arrogantly, and as it turned out quite erroneously, commented that he was close to completing “his Cannae.” Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to duplicate this battle of annihilation against Hitler’s Nazi forces in Europe “in the classic example of Cannae.” During the First Gulf War, General Norman Schwarzkopf modeled the coalition forces’ 1990 liberation of Kuwait on Hannibal’s “Cannae model.”
Following Hannibal’s devouring of the Roman legions at Cannae, his Carthaginians seemed unstoppable. With the Roman army shattered, the road to Rome itself lay unchecked. The prize of the “Eternal City” was within reach. Hannibal could finally realize his retribution on Rome and avenge his father for the dishonor of defeat during the First Punic War. There was, however, another unforeseen guardian of Rome waiting in the wings—the legions of faithful and famished mosquitoes patrolling the Pontine Marshes. After Rome’s military machine was smashed at Cannae, the mosquito was drafted into service and thrust into action. She began her 2,000-year history-piercing reign as the messenger of misery and death in the Pontine Marshes. She acted as the unofficial ambassador of Rome, with the sole duty of hailing and devouring hostile foreign armies and invading dignitaries.
In the aftermath of Hannibal’s convincing conquest at Cannae in 216 BCE, two events turned the tide of the Second Punic War and, with input from the mosquito, changed the course of history. The first was Hannibal’s reluctance to attack Rome. Although campaigning on the Italian peninsula for more than fifteen years, the Carthaginians never secured the capital city. Historians chalk up Hannibal’s refusal to take Rome to numerous factors. The city was protected by fresh, unsullied troops strong enough to defend its fortifications, negating the feasibility of a direct assault and forcing the Carthaginians to lay siege. This was not an option. Hannibal’s forces engaged in quick-strike maneuver warfare and were not trained, equipped, or supplied for siege tactics.
More critical, however, was that the limited lines of approach and siege grounds would entrench the Carthaginian army in the mosquito-infested Pontine Marshes, where malaria flourished year-round. In his meticulously thorough study, Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy, Robert Sallares affirms that wetlands across Italy, including the notorious Pontine Marshes of the Campagna, “were being seized by malaria.” Throughout the Italian campaign, malarious mosquitoes slowly ate away at the Carthaginian ranks. Legendary Anopheles mosquitoes had made a permanent and comfortable home in Italy long before Hannibal’s invasion and had earned themselves a fearsome reputation and accomplished résumé. Almost two centuries earlier, although the Gauls under King Brennus successfully sacked Rome in 390 BCE, malaria had so thinned their ranks that they settled for a payment of gold and withdrew from the area in sickly vagrant bands. Malaria killed so many in such a short duration that the Gauls were forced to abandon customary burial practices for mass funeral pyres. “Hannibal was too smart,” emphasizes Sallares, “to spend the summer in an area subject to intense malaria if he could avoid it.” The mosquito safeguarded Rome as much as her legions of human defenders.
The second war-altering event was the replacement of politically motivated Roman generals who lacked military training, with Publius Scipio (Africanus), heralded in the top tier of historical military minds. Scipio was a professional soldier, a survivor of the Battle of Cannae, and he possessed a reputation and record that quickly catapulted him into the higher echelons of leadership. Under Scipio, the Roman military underwent a sweeping transformation, becoming a professional and lethal war machine. He insisted on recruiting men into his legions from mountainous regions free from malaria. With the main Carthaginian army still ravaging the Italian countryside, Scipio decided to bring the war to Carthage itself.
In 203 BCE, his forces landed at Utica and advanced through Carthaginian territory, forcing Hannibal to quit Italy and return to defend his homeland. Despite mutual admiration, negotiations foundered between the two generals. The decisive blow was delivered by quick-striking Roman cavalry at the Battle of Zama in October 202 BCE. With this war-winning victory over Hannibal, Rome began its meteoric rise to superpower status. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy notes that “Hannibal has the sort of glamour which only surrounds those military geniuses who won stunning victories but ultimately lost the war, men such as Napoleon and Robert E. Lee. The march of his army from Spain via the Alps into Italy and the battles he won there were all epics in themselves.”
At the hands of Scipio, Hannibal was finally defeated on the battlefield at Zama, marking the end of the seventeen-year conflict. The Carthaginian decline, however, had begun much earlier in the malarial marshlands of Italy. The mosquito helped safeguard Rome from Hannibal and his hordes, providing a stepping-stone for Rome’s climb to command of the Mediterranean world and beyond. “The treacherous fleshpots of Campania,” states Diana Spencer in her work Roman Landscape: Culture and Identity, “had diverted Hannibal from Rome, and therefore from victory.” Both Hannibal and the Carthaginian culture were exiled and eventually perished as a result of the Roman triumph during the Punic Wars.
This mosquito-backed Roman victory had immeasurable and far-reaching implications across both space and time. The Greco-Roman culture that followed dominated Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East for the next 700 years and had a profound influence on the development of human civilization and Western culture. The world still lives among the mosquito-haunted shadows of the Roman Empire. Numerous countries currently speak a Latin-based, or heavily Latin-influenced
, language; many legal and political systems are an adaptation of Roman law and republic-style democracy; and the Roman Empire first martyred and then eased the passage of Christianity across Europe.
Another immeasurably important by-product of the Roman victory during the Punic Wars was the emergence of Roman literature. There were few writings prior to 240 BCE. A perpetual state of war, contact with the outside world, and the adoption of Alexander’s Hellenistic Greek culture stimulated Roman academia. Widely regarded authors left us with a paper trail of written works vividly portraying the mosquito’s historical weight and potency across the Roman world. In the first century BCE, Varro, one of Rome’s most celebrated scholars, warned that “precautions must be taken in the neighborhood of swamps, [they] breed certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, but which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause serious diseases.” He recommended for those who could afford it to build houses on high ground or hills free from swampy air, where the wind would blow away the invisible creatures. The house on the hill became fashionable for the Roman elite. This fad and practice was globally reinforced during the age of European colonization and continues to the present day. Hilltop houses in the United States are sought after by the wealthy as a status symbol and are 15–20% more expensive. Add the real estate market to the mosquito’s portfolio of influence.
Continuing the Hippocratic tradition, Roman physicians and curious intellectuals, like Varro, reinforced the miasma or “mal aria,” bad-air concept of disease. Conforming to the earlier musings of Hippocrates on the malarial “dog days of summer,” for example, the month of September in the Roman calendar was accompanied by a reference to the Dog Star and a cautionary description of the “bad air” disease. “There is a great disturbance in the air,” it warned. “The bodies of healthy people, and especially those of sick people, change with the condition of the air.” While the mosquito remained undetected, her diseases were not passed over or pardoned by the quills of Roman scholars and scribes.
The Mosquito Page 10
