Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy

extraordinary error.
⁷ Celli (1900: 18).
4

Introduction
one of the determining factors of the demographic and socio-economic evolution of a large part of the Italian peninsula’.⁸ Celli compiled a bibliography containing no less than 354 items on malaria in the Roman Campagna, up to the end of the last century.⁹ Interest continued to be strong in the first half of the twentieth century. However, the level of interest has waned since the final eradication of malaria from Italy after the Second World War. The last cases of native malaria in Italy were recorded in 1962. A re-organization of research in Rome led to the demise of the principal journal in the field, the Rivista di Malariologia, in 1967. This decrease in interest is reflected in the length of the bibliography, compiled by the eminent medical historian Mirko Grmek, of studies written in the twentieth century devoted to malaria in antiquity, only 113
items.¹⁰ This, in turn, is an example of the truism that historiography reflects contemporary interests. However, it is very important for modern historians to remember that so long as it was present, malaria was felt to be an enormous problem in Italy. The Pontine Marshes, one of the principal havens of malaria in central Italy, during the last two millennia attracted the attention of such major historical figures as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Mussolini, besides countless others of less note. Julius Caesar, who suffered from a quartan fever in his youth, conceived a scheme to drain the Pontine Marshes and make the area fit for agriculture, but it had not commenced at the time of his death.¹¹ Napoleon is reported to have been displeased when he learned that the French Empire contained a very large marsh. His efforts did not make any progress either, although the investigations of his prefect of Rome, M. le Comte De Tournon, constitute a fundamental source for the state of Lazio before modernization.¹² Mussolini finally succeeded where all his predecessors had failed for over two thousand years, and completely drained the Pontine Marshes, as part of his policy ⁸ Bonelli (1966: 659): ‘ la malaria fu per secoli . . . uno dei fattori determinanti della evoluzione demografica ed economico-sociale di una vasta parte della penisola italiana’.
⁹ Celli (1900: 256–75).
¹⁰ Grmek (1994).
¹¹ Suetonius DJ 1.2: morbo quartanae adgravante (seriously ill with a quartan fever) and 44.3: siccare Pomptinas paludes (to drain the Pontine marches); Cicero, Philippics 5.7: ille paludes siccare voluit (he wanted to drain the marshes); Plutarch, Caesar 58.9, ed. Ziegler: t¤ m†n 1lh t¤ per≥
Pwment∏non ka≥ Sht≤an ƒktrvyaß ped≤on åpode∏xai polla∏ß ƒnergÏn ånqr*pwn muri3si (he wished to turn the marshes around Pomentinum and Setia into a plain which could be cultivated by many thousands of men).
¹² Celli (1900: 102); De Tournon (1831).


Introduction
5
1 Mussolini’s inscription at Sabaudia, commemorating the eradication of malaria from the Pontine Marshes and the foundation of the new town of Sabaudia in 1934.
of internal colonization in Italy.¹³ In doing so, he altered the environment in a way that makes it difficult to imagine now what it was like in the past. The justification for another lengthy discussion of malaria, in spite of the volume of literature on the subject, is that there is nothing recent which combines a comprehensive assessment of the ancient sources for malaria in Italy with the latest results in historical demography and the latest advances in medical research and the scientific understanding of malaria. This book is devoted to reassessing the history and ecology of malaria in western central Italy in antiquity, and in particular its demographic consequences.
¹³ Collari (1949); Desowitz (1992: 210–11).
N
Milan
Venice
Ferrara
F R A N C E
B O S N I A A N D
Genoa
H E R Z E G O V I N A
Ravenna
Pistoia
Pisa
Florence
Ancona
Livorno
TUSCANY
A d r i a t i c S e a
Perugia
GrossetoUMBRIA
Terni
MAREMMA
Pescara
Rome
CORSICA
LAZIO
Pontine
APULIA
Marshes
Capua
CAMP
Bari
Brundisium
Naples
ANIA Tarentum
SARDINIA
Paestum
A L B A N I A
Metapontum
T y r r h e n i a n
Sybaris
Cagliari
S e a
Paola
SILA
Croton
M
Palermo
e
CALABRIA
d
S I C I L Y
i
Akragas
t
(Agrigento)
Syracuse
Carthage
Camarina
e
r r a
T U N I S I A
n
e
a
n
S
e
a
Map 1. Italy
2
Types of malaria
There are about 200 species of malaria, eukaryotic parasitic protozoa that belong to the suborder Haemosporina, order Eucoccidiida, subclass Coccidia, class Sporozoea of the phylum Apicomplexa.¹ New species are indeed still being discovered; yet another instance which illustrates the incompleteness of our current knowledge of biodiversity.² Most of these species of malaria infect other primates, rodents, bats, reptiles, and birds. Avian species of malaria have a much wider geographical distribution than malaria parasites of terrestrial animals (except the human species transported by man around the world) because of the mobility of birds. The avian species of malaria are abundant at the heart of the geographical area under study here, in the Roman Campagna. Since research in molecular evolution indicates that the malaria parasites are a very ancient group of organisms that originated at least two hundred million years ago, and birds are now widely believed to be descendants of dinosaurs, it is quite likely that dinosaurs also suffered from malaria. Malaria is not solely a problem for humans. Indeed it can sometimes cause severe problems for other animals as well. For example, the role of the introduction of avian species of malaria to Hawaii in the extinction of species of birds indigenous to that country has been a subject of debate in conservation biology.³
However, the focus of this book will be on human malaria.
The word ‘malaria’ originally signified ‘bad air’ ( mal’aria) in Italian. This name was derived from the theory of the miasmatic nature of the disease which prevailed until Laveran’s discovery of malarial parasites in human blood in 1880 (see Ch. 4. 1 below).
Gilberto Corbellini and Lorenza Merzagora found that the first attested use of the term mal aere was by Marco Cornaro in a book entitled Scritture della laguna, which was published in Venice in 1440.
The earliest Italian publication to use the word malaria without the