Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (38 page)

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.

Tuscany

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

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
]

194

Tuscany

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
).

Tuscany

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).

198

Tuscany

We see the old ruins, guarded by no one,

And the disintegrating walls of abandoned Cosa.