Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (45 page)

Frontinus, writing towards the end of the first century , confirms that Rome had a reputation for ‘bad air’.⁶⁸ He claimed that water-management operations under the emperor Nerva had solved the problem, but Galen’s later observations show that the problem had not been solved at all. Since the frequency of malaria fluctuated depending on numerous variable environmental parameters (such as the amount of rainfall, the height of the Tiber, the temperature, etc.), some mild years might have occurred by chance immediately following Nerva’s operations. That would explain Frontinus’ comments. Celli and several other writers expressed the view that epidemics of malaria occurred in Rome and the Roman Campagna every five to eight years on average in the early modern period.⁶⁹ It could also simply be the case that Frontinus had no option but to praise the emperor:

Not even waste waters are lost: the causes of the rather unhealthy atmosphere have been eliminated, the appearance of the streets is clean, the air is purer, and the bad air for which the city was always notorious, according to older writers, has been removed.⁷⁰

The argument so far has shown that
P. falciparum
malaria was not ⁶⁷ Pliny,
Ep.
4.2.5–6, ed. Schuster (1958):
Tenet se trans Tiberim in hortis, in quibus latissimum solum porticibus immensis, ripam statuis suis occupavit, ut est in summa avaritia sumptuosus, in summa infamia gloriosus. Vexat ergo civitatem insaluberrimo tempore et, quod vexat, solacium putat
.

⁶⁸ Jordan (1879) discussed the corrupt text of Frontinus. Seneca,
Epist
. 104.6 also mentioned the
gravitatem urbi
. In this passage Seneca described another notable feature of the city of Rome in antiquity, atmospheric pollution. The air of Rome was unhealthy not only because of mosquitoes carrying malaria and of airborne pathogens such as tuberculosis, but also because of the high level of pollution caused by burning wood, oil, and other materials for industrial and domestic purposes. Capasso (2000) noted that the Grotta Rossa mummy, the only mummy found in Rome so far, shows severe anthracosis even though the individual in question died young.

⁶⁹ Corti (1984: 638).

⁷⁰ Frontinus,
de aquae ductu urbis Romae
88.3, ed. Kunderewicz (1973):
Ne pereuntes quidem aquae otiosae sunt: ablatae causae gravioris caelii munda viarum facies, purior spiritus, quique apud veteres se
〈
mper
〉
urbi infamis aer fuit est remotus
.

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City of Rome

confined to the Pontine Marshes, its most notorious focus, but was also endemic in at least some districts of the city of Rome itself, and extended inland into Umbria, during the period of the Roman Empire. This geographical distribution resembles that of the early modern period, when the Tiber valley was severely affected along most of its course, far into Umbria. By the first century  there had already been created in and around the city of Rome a distinctive disease community or pathocoenosis, to use Grmek’s concept, which was dominated by
P. falciparum
, the most dangerous species of malaria. That was a distinction for which the city of Rome was to be famous over the succeeding 1900 years or so, as the home of ‘Roman Fever’, the title chosen by North for his book on a disease which was certainly not confined to Rome yet was more characteristic of Rome than of other major European cities. Before leaving the city of Rome to examine some aspects of the medical situation beyond the suburbs of the city, in the Roman Campagna, let us glance at a few more of the later literary references to malaria in Rome (out of a vast corpus of literature which could be quoted).

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

231

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

232

City of Rome

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.

City of Rome

233

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.

234

City of Rome

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
, xxv, 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
.