Italian Malaria. 337 
and its environs.. Among the writers who have turned their atten- 
tion to this subject, the greater number are of opinion that Rome 
as not always been so unhealthy as it is at present, and they attri- 
bute the change to the superior cultivation of the soil which was 
practiced by the ancients. This opinion is not destitute of founda- 
tion; but it is valid, as may easily be conceived, only in relation to 
the time when Rome and the Campagna were in a very populous 
and flourishing condition. If we recede into times more remote 
and consider what the country must have been when first settled by 
_ those ancient inhabitants, we shall be obliged to admit that it must 
have contained extensive marshes and low grounds; we know that 
long after the foundation of Rome, there were considerable marsh- 
es between the different hills within its enclosure, especially between 
mounts Aventine and Palatine, and between the latter and the Capito- 
line. Dionysius of Halicarnassus informs us that they were very deep, 
and according to Propertius, they were crossed in sail boats. Livy 
compares the country of Rome at the time when the city was built, to’ 
a vast desert, and Ovid says that it was covered with frightful forests. 
Experience teaches us that in all marshy and uncultivated coun- 
tries, the air is unwholesome, and as we know how rapidly the pop- 
ulation of Rome increased and to what a prodigious extent it ar- 
rived notwithstanding these unfavorable circumstances ; how many 
towns of consequence such as Gabi and others, rose up in the vicin- 
ity of those pestilential lakes ;—that Ostia even, founded by Ancus 
Martius, in a place where now,-in the unhealthy season there is only 
a tavern supplying wine and bread to the herdsmen, formerly flour- 
ished, as well as Ardea, which at’present contains only sixty inhab- 
itants, and that Lavinium, is reduced to the miserable Chateau 
of Prattica, we are compelled to inquire how the ancients sheltered 
themselves from the pernicious influence of their unhealthy atmosphere. 
Opinions on this subject are very various. Many learned men 
believe that the Champaigne of Latium was formerly less warm than 
at present: because according to Horace, the Soracte was covered 
with snow, and according to Livy the Tiber was sometimes frozen ; 
whence they conclude that marshy exhalations were less active and 
pernicious. Others attribute the absence of disease in the midst of 
unwholesome air, to the more robust constitutions of the ancients, and ~ 
say with Juveual, 
Nam genus hoc vivo jam decrescebat Homero ; 
Terra malos homines nunc educat atque pusillos. 
