Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (47 page)

Roman Campagna

241

Appian’s account of the behaviour of the rich in Roman Italy has an air of realism about it.¹¹

This leads us on to the vexed issue of latifundia in Roman Italy.

Pliny claimed that the latifundia had ruined Italy.¹² Recent discussions of this question have emphasized that use of the term is restricted in extant literature to a fairly short period, the first century . Moreover it did not have any precise meaning and could be applied to property holdings of quite different sizes.¹³

However, there is no reason why the term should have had any very precise meaning; this requirement on the part of modern historians stems from an excessive preoccupation with legalistic issues. The debate should focus instead on the degree of fragmentation of large property holdings and on their internal organization. At the end of the fourth century  Olympiodorus of Thebes stated that rich Roman families drew annual monetary incomes from their properties of about four thousand pounds of gold, not to mention the wheat, wine, and other produce which was worth about a third of this amount. Even if we did not have such explicit evidence, it would be foolish to deny that there were very large property holdings in the Roman Empire, and that the immense wealth of members of the Roman élite was indeed derived from large property holdings, regardless of what term(s) were used to designate large estates.¹⁴ The argument that follows proceeds from these assumptions. In more recent times regions of Italy, like Lazio, which were dominated by malaria, were indeed characterized by very large estates, with small permanent populations in the pestilential lowlands, while the bulk of the population lived in towns on more healthy hills, or in mountainous regions. Celli summarized the situation as follows:

Large estates and malaria usually go together, because man, in certain months of the year, cannot live in intensely malarious regions where, therefore only cultivation on an extensive scale is possible, and hence the large estates.¹⁵

¹¹ Bercé (1989: 241); Celli (1933: 26–7); De Felice (1965: 92–3), Burke (1996: 2278); Appian, BC 1.7.

¹² Pliny,
NH
18.7.35:
latifundia perdidere Italiam
.

¹³ Martin (1995).

¹⁴ Olympiodorus
ap.
Photius,
bibliotheca
, ed. Henry (1959), i. 185–6 used the rather unspecific word kt&mata for the properties in question.

¹⁵ Celli (1900: 144). See also De Clementi (1989, 45–9) for the effects of malaria on the early modern latifundia of Lazio. One of the anonymous referees pointed out the 242

Roman Campagna

Of course malaria was not confined to large estates. It could equally well occur in areas of smallholdings, as we have already seen in relation to market gardening in and around the city of Rome. Nevertheless malaria was strongly associated with large estates. Leading Italian writers such as Francesco Ciccotti and Giustino Fortunato attributed to malaria a considerable role in explaining the underdevelopment in recent times of the Mezzogiorno, relative to northern Italy.¹⁶ The role of malaria is a constant undercurrent to the story of Carlo Levi’s
Christ stopped at Eboli
, one of the most famous works of modern Italian literature. Eboli overlooks the intensely malarious plain in which ancient Paestum was situated. The close link between malaria, large estates, agricultural wage labour, and demographic regimes characterized by both high mortality and high fertility has been reaffirmed by the most recent research in Italian historical demography.¹⁷ Similarly in Spain a very close correlation has been noticed between the distribution of malaria and of
latifundios
.¹⁸ It cannot be stressed too much that there was a universal consensus among people who studied the situation in Lazio in the early modern period that the presence of endemic malaria made intensive agriculture virtually impossible in practice, however desirable it might have been in theory. The evidence from the Roman agronomists suggests that the situation was fundamentally exactly the same in antiquity by the time of the Late Republic. Perhaps the simplest way of demonstrating this is to juxtapose quotations from the ancient Roman agronomists with quotations from modern writers to show the similarity between conditions in antiquity and conditions in the early modern period, before the eradication of malaria:

Spring-sown wheat remained essentially confined to limited areas. It was considered impossible to cultivate it in a large part of the domains of the Papal State, in the Roman Campagna and the Pontine Marshes, because it reached maturity in the season in which the air was more pestilential and in which it was liable to cereal rust.¹⁹

significance of the book by Antonio Monti (1941), an account of the work of Luigi Torelli, in relation to the mentality of large landowners and malaria. Unfortunately it was not possible to obtain a copy of this rare book.

¹⁶ Snowden (1999).

¹⁷ Del Panta (1989: 28) on the
latifundia
of Grosseto, also
Agricoltura e società
(1980); Arlacchi (1983, chapter 3) on the
latifundia
of the Crotonese; del Panta (1996, 141); Corti (1984, 643–7).

¹⁸ Beauchamp (1988: 258–9).

¹⁹ De Felice (1965: 55):
Il grano marzajolo rimase sostanzialmente circoscritto a limitate superfici, Roman Campagna

243

However, the most profitable land is land which is healthier than elsewhere, since there the proceeds are certain: however, on land that is pestilential, no matter how fertile it is, disaster does not allow the farmer to achieve a profit. For, where the reckoning is with death, not only is the profit uncertain there, but even the lives of the farmers are at risk. In an unhealthy location farming is a lottery in which the life and possessions of the owner are in danger.²⁰

Those cultures, for instance viticulture, which require repeated care and labour even in the summer, can only be practised in localities with healthy air that are consequently somewhat elevated. Consequently in the Alban hills, very rich in vineyards, the curious phenomenon is observed that the lower limit of these vineyards signals almost exactly the upper limit of malaria, reigning in lower regions.²¹

In a pestilential locality, where work is impossible in summer, the honour-able master will add a fourth part to the fee for the work [sc. the construction of a villa].²²

The rarity of maize cultivation in the plains is explained readily when one remembers, on the one hand, the persistent aridity which usually prevails in the summer, and then the labour shortage, owing to malaria, which is observed in the season in which the vegetative growth of this plant occurs.²³

However, I have a general principle, like a witness, which should be declared more frequently. M. Atilius Regulus, a very renowned general during the First Punic War, is said to have enunciated this rule: that not even the most fertile estate should be bought if it is unhealthy . . . Atilius gave this opinion to farmers in his own time with greater authority as it ritenendosi impossible coltivarlo in gran parte del Patrimonio, dell’Agro e delle Palude Pontine dato che giungeva a maturazione nella stagione in cui l’aria vi era più ‘pestilenziale’ ed era pertanto soggetto alla ‘ruggine’.

²⁰ Varro,
RR
1.4.3:
Utilissimus autem is ager qui salubrior est quam alii, quod ibi fructus certus: contra in pestilenti calamitas, quamvis in feraci agro, colonum ad fructus pervenire non patitur. Etenim ubi ratio cum orco habetur, ibi non modo fructus est incertus, sed etiam colentium vita. Quare ubi salubritas non est, cultura non aliud est atque alea domini vitae ac rei familiaris
.

²¹ F. Giordano,
Condizioni topografiche e fisiche
. . . in
Monografia
(1881: lix):
Talune di queste colture, come per esempio la vite, che esige ripetuta cura e lavorazione anche nella state, non può praticarsi che nei siti di aria sana e perciò alquanto elevati, e perciò vedesi il curioso fenomeno dei monti Albani ricchissimi di vigneti, dove il limite inferiore di questi segna presso a poco il limite della malaria regnante nelle regioni inferiori
.

²² Cato,
de agr
. 14.5:
Loco pestilenti, ubi aestate fieri non potest, bono domino pars quarta preti accedat
.

²³ Author of the chapter entitled
Sulle condizioni dell’agricoltura e pastorizia della provincia di Roma
, in
Monografia
(1881: ci):
La scarsezza di cultura del granturco nelle pianure si spiega agevolmente quando si pensa da un lato, alla insistente siccità che non di rado vi domina nella estate, e poi al difetto di braccia che si verifica, a cagione della malaria, nella stagione appunto in cui si svolgono le fasi vegetative di questa pianta
.

244

Roman Campagna

was based on experience, for works of history say he farmed a tract of land in Pupinia that was pestilential.²⁴

Malaria prevents changes in the agricultural system, and this in turn maintains malaria. A vicious circle from which it is impossible to escape, except with an expression of energy and with an enormous and prompt expenditure of money which could only be expected from an energetic and wealthy government . . . but the current state of the finances of the Italian government . . . would not permit such a heroic remedy.²⁵

The accounts of early modern Lazio show that in the lowlands which were dominated by malaria it was virtually impossible to cultivate any crop which required attention in the summer and autumn (i.e. during the season of danger from malaria), such as spring-sown wheat, maize, or, most significantly given its importance in the economy, the vine. Viticulture ended at the altitude, going down the Alban hills, where malaria started.²⁶ In antiquity Cato states there were pestilential places where work was impossible in summer, just as in the early modern period. It is interesting that this was already the case by Cato’s time in the first half of the second century . In view of his writing about Graviscae (see Ch.

7 above), there is no doubt whatsoever that Cato knew all about endemic malaria.²⁷ In the passage quoted here, which deserves more attention than it has received, Cato gives an indication of the additional cost to the Roman economy of the mortality and morbidity arising from malaria, stating that the cost to a contractor of ²⁴ Columella,
RR
1.4.2–3:
In universum tamen quasi testificandum atque saepius praedicandum habeo, quod primo iam Punico bello dux inclitissimus M. Atilius Regulus dixisse memoratur: fundum sicuti ne fecundissimi quidem soli, cum sit insalubris . . . parandum; quod Atilius aetatis suae agricolis maiore cum auctoritate censebat peritus usu, nam Pupiniae pestilentis…agricultorem fuisse eum loquuntur historiae
.

²⁵ F. Giordano
Condizioni topografiche e fisiche
. . . in
Monografia
(1881, LXII):
‘La malaria impedisce il mutare sistema di cultura, e questo viceversa mantiene la malaria. Circolo terribile dal quale è ben difficile escire, salvo con un atto di energia e con una ingente e pronta spesa che soltanto potrebbero attendersi da un governo energico e ricco di mezzi . . . Ma lo stato attuale delle finanze del Governo italiano . . . non consentirebbero ora un rimedio cosi eroico’
.

²⁶ Columella
RR
III.2.16 said that the Eugenian vines of the Alban Hills in antiquity were adapted to a cold and damp climate. Evidently these vines were cultivated on the higher slopes of the Alban Hills. Pliny,
NH
14.8.64 described the wine produced in the Alban Hills as very sweet. Knight (1805: 62) observed that since Albano is elevated, peasants from the surrounding area stayed there from July to September in the early nineteenth century to avoid ‘ “the malaria’, which is the name they give to the pernicious dews which fall in summer’. The Alban Hills reach altitudes of over 900 metres. Werner Sombart (1888) wrote a treatise about the peculiar economic problems of the Roman Campagna.

²⁷ North (1896: 74) reached an erroneous conclusion because he was not aware of the fragment of Cato on Graviscae, cf. Celli (1933: 26–7). Pliny,
NH
14.8.67 mentioned the wine of Graviscae.

Roman Campagna

245

building a villa was likely to rise by 25%. That such an estimate of the economic effects of malaria is quite realistic is shown by the report to President Roosevelt in 1938 of the National Emergency Council on economic conditions in the south of the United States, cited by Desowitz. This report estimated that malaria had reduced the industrial output of the southern states of the USA by about a third.²⁸ Of course, for the slaves actually doing the work envisaged by Cato, who were killed or whose health was ruined by malaria, the cost could not be evaluated in purely financial terms. In order not to end up owning areas with such enormous economic

problems (imagine what a sudden increase in labour costs of 25%

would do to business in the economy of any modern developed country), the Roman agronomists essentially recommended avoidance behaviour. One should refrain from buying pestilential land, such as the notorious
ager Pupinius
(or
regio Pupiniae
) towards Tusculum, where the Roman consul Regulus had a farm in the middle of the third century . Both Columella and Pliny record that Regulus already advised against the purchase of unhealthy farms, even if the soil was very fertile, as early as the third century . It is interesting that there was already intense malaria in at least part of the Roman Campagna at that time, moreover in an inland plain rather than the coastal plains.²⁹ As has already been observed, the distribution of malaria is always discontinuous and highly localized because of its very complicated ecological requirements. As Cicero put it:

let us return to the snares of Chrysippus: first of all certainly let us answer him on the question of contagion, and let us deal with other matters afterwards. We see how much difference there is in the nature of different places: some are healthy, others pestilential.³⁰

²⁸ Desowitz (1997: 197). Livadas and Athanassatos (1963) described the economic benefits of malaria eradication in Greece. McCarthy
et al
. (1999) found a statistically significant negative association between higher malaria morbidity rates and per capita GDP growth rates in tropical countries today.