Mario Coluzzi, Gilberto Corbellini, Tim Cornell, Peter
Garnsey, Mirko Grmek, and John Scarborough all read previous versions of the text. Carmine Ampolo made helpful comments at a conference in Parma. Mary Dobson provided a photocopy of an important article that was difficult to obtain. Peter Attema and Franco Ravelli supplied copies of some of their own work. Mario Coluzzi, Clem Ramsdale, and Graham White provided information about mosquitoes. James Oeppen and Richard Smith gave advice on one technical detail about life-tables. The comments of the anonymous referees were very helpful. Susan Gomzi, Abigail Bouwman, and Cia Anderung worked alongside me on the bones from Lugnano in Teverina, which were provided by David Soren.
I wish to thank Mario Coluzzi and Claudio Finistauri for their hospitality when I visited the Istituto di Parassitologia in La Sapienza University, Rome, and Lugnano in Teverina. I also wish to thank xii
Acknowledgements
Hilary O’Shea and the staff of Oxford University Press and Jane Wheare. Last but not least, financial support from the Leverhulme Trust was invaluable.
Obviously I am solely responsible for the views expressed and for any faults that remain. All the translations of Latin, Greek, and Italian texts are my own translations. I benefited enormously from the resources of the John Rylands Library in Manchester and the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine in London, as it is now called. One important work exploited in this book was accidentally discovered, while looking for something else, gathering dust on a shelf in the Rylands Library. It did not look as if anyone had read it for a hundred years. I hope this book will enjoy a better fate.
R. S.
C O N T E N T S
List of illustrations
xiv
List of figures, maps, and tables
xvi
1. Introduction
1
2. Types of malaria
7
3. Evolution and prehistory of malaria
23
4. The ecology of malaria in Italy
43
Malaria and mosquitoes
43
Malarial environments
55
Malaria in Sardinia
90
Malaria, roads, and housing
93
Climatic change
101
Agricultural change and deforestation
103
5. The demography of malaria
115
Direct and indirect approaches to the demography of
malaria
115
Interactions of malaria with other diseases
123
Malaria and nutrition
140
Comparative demography of malaria in Italy and
England
151
6. The Pontine Marshes
168
7. Tuscany
192
8. The city of Rome
201
9. The Roman Campagna
235
10. Apulia
262
11. Geographical contrasts and demographic variation
269
References
287
Glossary
329
Index
331
I L L U S T R A T I O N S
All photographs were taken by the author except where stated otherwise in the captions to the illustrations.
1. Mussolini’s inscription at Sabaudia.
5
2. Ospedale di San Giovanni.
17
3. Anopheles labranchiae.
45
4 . Fontana di Trevi.
46
5 . Artemisia absinthium.
47
6. The Virgin of Fevers in the Sacristy of St. Peter’s in the Vatican in Rome.
51
7. Plan of modern Sezze.
56
8. View of Norma in the distance from Sermoneta.
58
9. View of Ninfa from Norma.
59
10. Ruins of the Roman villa of Poggio Gramignano,
near Lugnano in Teverina.
66
11. PCR products amplified from the Lugnano bones.
67
12. The coastal forest of the Parco Naturale della Maremma.
73
13 . The entrance to the Cloaca Maxima.
76
14. Anopheles sacharovi.
84
15. A traditional peasant hut in the Pontine region.
94
16. The Val di Chiana and Lago Trasimeno.
99
17. The Monti Cimini.
104
18. The northern slopes of Monte Circeo.
107
19. A view of Sermoneta.
120
20. Centro culturale polivalente in Pontinia.
170
21. View of the Lago di Sabaudia.
171
22. The ilex-oak forest of Monte Circeo.
172
23. The Pontine plain viewed from Sermoneta.
175
24. The southern end of the Pontine plain.
184
25. Ruins of the Roman colony of Graviscae.
194
26. The modem saline of Graviscae.
195
27. Wetland in the Parco Naturale della Maremma.
199
28. Cardinal Lugo orders the use of cinchona bark.
203
29. Monte Testaccio.
208
Illustrations
xv
30. Via della Reginella.
210
31. The Colosseum.
213
32. Ospedale di Santo Spirito.
216
33. The Roman Forum.
217
34. The monument of Leopold II in Grosseto (front and
side views).
232–3
35. Luigi Torelli’s Carta della malaria dell’Italia.
237
36. The angel of death striking a door during the plague of Rome.
274
37. The Circus Maximus.
281
F I G U R E S , M A P S , A N D T A B L E S
M
1. Italy
6
2. Umbria and northern Lazio
65
3. Ravenna and Emilia-Romagna
80
4. Southern Lazio
169
5. The Maremma and Valdichiana
193
6. The city of Rome
207
7. Salpi and Apulia
263
F
1. Evolutionary relationships of selected Plasmodium species
24
T
1. Some of the species in the genus Plasmodium
8
2. Palaearctic mosquito species in the Anopheles maculipennis complex
44
3. Probability of death at various ages
160
4. Probability of death at various ages
161
5. Number of deaths per person-years
162
6. Number of deaths per person-years (m(x) )
163
7. Number of people aged 20+ who die between ages
x and y
164
8. Distribution of lakes within the city of Rome
215
9. Baptisms and deaths in early modern Rome
275
1
Introduction
Keith Hopkins moved the study of the demography of the ancient Roman world into a new era with his demonstration that ‘ages at death derived from Roman tombstones cannot be used to estimate expectation of life at birth or at subsequent ages’.¹ He suggested that the life expectancy at birth of the Roman population lay between 20 and 30 and advocated that life-tables derived from data from modern populations should be used as models for the age-structure of the Roman population in antiquity. Since then, the use of these model life-tables has enjoyed a considerable degree of popularity among ancient historians. Indeed it has become the current orthodoxy, almost an article of faith in certain quarters.
Hopkins himself was careful to add an important qualification, in terms of a requirement for further research, at the end of his article: ‘Our attention . . . should . . . be directed . . . to a more general assessment of the applicability of these model life tables and to an analysis of the determinants of mortality, both in Rome in particular, and in general.’² Unfortunately he never followed up his own recommendation. The bulk of subsequent research has also failed signally in this respect. Yet an analysis of the causes of death is absolutely essential if we are ever to move beyond attempting to describe mortality in antiquity towards explaining and understanding it.
The message of this
