It is now well known, following the work of Roger Mols in the 1950s on European cities and the later classic studies of Wrigley and Finlay on London, that large pre-industrial urban populations were incapable of reproducing themselves. Large cities depended on constant immigration from less densely populated but more healthy rural areas both to maintain and to increase their population sizes. Early modern Rome certainly fitted the same pattern as London. As a nineteenth-century Italian writer put it:
All the great cities . . . like Rome, consume more men than they produce, and are refurnished from the countryside.¹³
Research into the demography of early modern Rome by
Schiavoni and Sonnino showed that the growth of the city of Rome depended on immigration for most of the period of study, from 1598 to 1824. There was a significant excess of deaths over births for most of this period (see Table 9). The exceptional period of low death rates from 1658 to the end of the seventeenth century followed a plague epidemic in 1657, accompanied by extensive migration away from the city to avoid the disease. Subsequently the city’s population was recovering from a very low base. These data show that the Roman population was capable of increasing on its ¹² For bubonic plague ( lues inguinaria) in Rome, accompanying a Tiber flood, at the beginning of the reign of Gregory see Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum, iii.24, ed. Waitz (1878) Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol. xlviii ( Scriptores 7) and Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, x.1, cf. Paulus Diaconus, ii.4, iv.4, and vi.5 for other outbreaks of plague. It should be noted that the vocabulary used to describe plague was completely different from that used for malaria. Consequently there is no chance that the two diseases were confused.
¹³ A. Gabelli, Prefazione, in Monografia (1881: lii): Tutti le grandi città . . . al pari di Roma, con-sumano più uomini che non ne producano, e ne vengono rifornite dalle campagne.
274
Geographical contrasts
36. The angel of
death striking a
door during the
plague of Rome in
1656. Engraving by
Levasseur after
J. Delaunay. The
Wellcome Library,
London.
Geographical contrasts
275
Table 9. Baptisms and deaths (per 1000) in Rome from 1621 to 1824
Period
Baptisms
Deaths
1621–9
26.9
38.3
1630–9
30.4
29.0
1640–9
29.7
33.8
1650–5
27.9
31.8
1656–7
26.0
69.3
1658–9
30.8
28.1
1660-9
32.8
24.5
1670–9
30.1
25.6
1680–9
30.0
23.9
1690–9
30.9
24.0
1702–9
27.7
29.7
1710–19
26.0
39.3
1720–9
27.1
38.7
1730–9
28.3
41.1
1740–9
29.4
42.6
1750–9
32.3
39.9
1760–9
31.4
46.5
1770–9
32.6
38.3
1780–9
32.0
46.0
1790–9
33.1
44.9
1800–9
32.8
50.3
1810–19
30.8
37.6
1820–4
33.1
37.4
Source: Schiavoni and Sonnino (1982: 102, table II).
own when it was small. Such a capability of course helps to explain where the manpower for colonization came from in the early stages of Roman history in antiquity. At the same time the early modern data also make it clear that as the urban population grew, a deficit of births relative to deaths became inevitable, and inevitable at a population-size level far below the size of the population of the city of Rome during the time of the Roman Empire.
The availability of data from Rome itself in the early modern period means that there is in fact no need at all for historians to rely on the example of London; the data from Rome itself are much more pertinent. Delumeau studied the census of 1526–7 in Rome.
Extrapolating from a sample of about 4,000 people for which evidence is available, he reached the conclusion that out of Rome’s population of about 55,000 at that time, only 16% were actually of local origin. No less than 64% of the population of Rome in 276
Geographical contrasts
1526 originated from other parts of Italy (principally Tuscany—encouraged by the presence in Rome at the time of popes born in Florence—and Milan), while as much as 20% of the population came from outside Italy (mainly from Spain, France, and Ger-many).¹⁴
There is no reason for thinking that ancient Rome was any healthier than early modern Rome. Celsus observed that urbani, the inhabitants of towns, were particularly liable to ill health.¹⁵ Indeed the situation in ancient Rome was probably significantly worse than the situation in early modern Rome, since the population was larger and denser during the time of the Roman Empire, and Galen’s information about the frequency of P. falciparum malaria in Rome in the second century must also be taken into account.
The evidence of Herodian (commenting on the epidemic of 189, probably smallpox¹⁶) confirms that massive immigration to the city of Rome was occurring in Galen’s own time.¹⁷ Even as late as after the capture of Rome by Alaric in 410, it appears that the city was still attracting immigrants, according to Olympiodorus.¹⁸ It was noted in Chapter 5. 4 above that visitors from northern Europe contracted malaria in Rome and took the parasites back home with them. However, it is also very important to observe that continuous immigration to Rome would by itself have intensified malaria in and around the city because undoubtedly some of the immigrants would have come from other areas of endemic malaria (e.g. in southern Italy), already be infected, and so bring new malarial parasites to the city in their bloodstreams. The city of Rome both exported and imported diseases, a role facilitated first in antiquity by increased human mobility following the unification of the Mediterranean countries and a large part of Europe under the Roman Empire, and secondly in subsequent historical periods by ¹⁴ Delumeau (1957: i. 197–220); Black (1789: 17) recognized in the eighteenth century that the birth rate was lower than the death rate in Rome; Sori (1984: 554–9).
¹⁵ Celsus, de medicina 1.2.1: at imbecillis, quo in numero magna pars urbanorum. Mudry (1997) discussed this text.
¹⁶ Cassius Dio 73.14.3–4 also mentions this epidemic.
¹⁷ Herodian 1.12.1: sunvbh d† ka≥ kat’ ƒke∏no kairoı loim*dh nÎson katasce∏n t¶n ∞Ital≤an: m3lista d† tÏ p3qoß ƒn t∫ <Rwma≤wn pÎlei ‡kmasen ‹te poluanqr*p8 te oÇs7
f»sei ka≥ toŸß pantacÎqen Ëpodecomvn7, poll& tv tiß fqor¤ ƒgvneto Ëpozug≤wn ‹ma ka≥
ånqr*pwn. (At that time an epidemic disease spread over Italy. Its effects were particularly bad in the city of Rome, which naturally had a large population and attracted immigrants from all quarters. There were many deaths of both animals and men.).
¹⁸ Olympiodorus ap. Photius, bibliotheca, ed. Henry (1959), i.
