Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy by Robert Sallares (ereader manga txt) 📗
- Author: Robert Sallares
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¹² P. F. Russell (1955: 37–9) quotes the original Sanskrit; Futcher (1936: 541–2); Zysk (1985: 34–44); Raina (1991: 1–4); Zurbrigg (1994).
¹³ Grmek (1984), Nutton (1983), (1998), and (2000 a), and Leven (1993) on contagion; Pellegrin (1988).
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performed the laboratory experiments which proved it, in birds and in humans respectively.¹⁴ However, as far as antiquity is concerned, it is striking that even the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, a very interesting work of unknown authorship, described ‘fever’
(puretÎß) as not infectious, even though the author(s) of this work took an interest in contagion that was uncommon in ancient medicine, describing fq≤siß (tuberculosis) and øfqalm≤a (trachoma?) as infectious.¹⁵ Cicero, following the view expressed centuries earlier in one of the works in the Hippocratic corpus, refused to accept that intermittent fevers were of divine origin just because of their periodicity.¹⁶ Nevertheless it is clear that some people did consider intermittent fevers to be of divine or rather demonic origin, since there was a temple of Dea Febris on the Palatine hill, reputedly the site of the original settlement of Rome by Romulus. This might be significant with regard to the question of the antiquity of the cult.¹⁷
There were also temples dedicated to this deity in at least two other sites in the city of Rome, according to Valerius Maximus: When they worship other deities, they expect to receive a benefit. However Fever is worshipped, so that she will cause less harm, in temples one of which is situated on the Palatine hill, a second in the vicinity of the monuments of Marius, and a third in the highest part of the Vicus Longus, and remedies which have been applied to the bodies of ill people are brought there.¹⁸
¹⁴ Celli (1900: 90), cf. Corti (1984: 660–1) on the various views about the aetiology of malaria held by early modern Italian peasants. Iliffe (1995: 58, 113) noted that some African peoples also associated malaria with mosquitoes.
¹⁵ [Aristotle] Problems 7.8.887a.
¹⁶ Hippocrates, On the sacred disease, ed. Littré (1839–61) vi. 354–5: oÈ pureto≥ oÈ åmfhmerino≥ ka≥ oÈ trita∏oi ka≥ oÈ tetarta∏oi oÛd†n ¬ssÎn moi dokvousin Èero≥ e”nai ka≥ ËpÏ qeoı g≤nesqai ta»thß t[ß no»sou [sc. epilepsy], —n oÛ qaumas≤wß πcwsi (Quotidian, tertian, and quartan fevers seem to me to be no less sacred and sent by god than this disease [sc. epilepsy], but no one wonders at them.); Cicero, de natura deorum 3.24: si omnes motus omniaque quae certis temporibus ordinem suum conservant divina dicimus, ne tertianas quoque febres et quartanas divinas esse dicendum sit, quarum reversione et motu quid potest esse constantius? (If we say that all movements and all phenomena that maintain their own order at set periodic intervals are divine, must we not declare that tertian and quartan fevers are also divine, for what is more regular than their recurrent cycle?) and 3.63: Febris enim fanum in Palatio (a shrine of Fever on the Palatine); Pliny, NH 2.5.16.
¹⁷ Lactantius, Inst. Div. 1.20.17, ed. Monat, in Sources Chrétiennes, 326 (1986), M. Minucius Felix, Octavius 25.8, and Seneca, Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii 6 also mention Febris as a divinity.
Dumézil (1996: 230 and n. 40) regarded Febris as a demon, but noted that little is known about Roman demonology.
¹⁸ Valerius Maximus, factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri 2.5.6, ed. Combès (1995): Et ceteros quidem ad benefaciendum venerabantur. Febrem autem ad minus nocendum templis colebant, quorum [ cont. on p. 52]
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6. The Virgin of Fevers in the Sacristy of St. Peter’s in the Vatican in Rome. Reproduction of engraving by Pietro Leone Bombelli (1737–1809) in 1792. The Wellcome Library, London.
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Since most individual attacks of malaria in adulthood in endemic areas are not actually directly fatal (although overall life expectancy of the whole population is sharply reduced—see Ch. 5.
4 below), owing to acquired/inherited immunity, in practice many attempted ‘treatments’ in antiquity would have appeared to have been successful, even though they were in reality no better than
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