The impact of Malaria on the spatial distribution of inscriptions dedicated to Asclepius in the Roman Empire
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Malaria, a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by Plasmodium parasites, posed a significant health risk to populations in the Roman Empire. Through a combination of archaeological records and ancient literary sources, including works by Strabo and Pliny the Younger, we can identify regions where malaria likely exerted considerable pressure on communities. The most comprehensive assessment of malaria endemicity in the ancient Mediterranean remains the work of Daniel C. Browning, who mapped malaria risk across the Roman Empire in a GIS by examining environmental conditions conducive to its spread, such as elevation and proximity to water sources. Crucially, Browning’s analysis relies on Torelli’s pre-eradication maps of malaria in Italy and Sardinia, which provide the foundational data on malaria-prone zones. Building on these resources, our study investigates cultural responses to malaria in the Roman Empire. Specifically, we examine whether regions with higher malaria risk show more frequent worship of Roman healing deities, such as Asclepius and Apollo. In this regard, we use Latin inscriptions dedicated to these healing deities based on the Latin Inscriptions in Space and Time dataset (LIST) as a proxy for the spatial distribution of these cults in the Roman Empire. In the paper, we present preliminary results of quantitative spatial proximity analyses measuring the spatial closeness of the epigraphic data (for Asclepius, Apollo, and other cults) to zones with a high probability of Malaria occurrence. |
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