I get that, but germ theory during the middle ages wasn’t exactly widespread, was it? If I’m not mistaken, the dominant belief was that diseases were caused by foul-smelling odors, not germs.
So, this previous post is also relevant. The Roman legions actually understood how disease worked, and used policies to minimize the impact of infectious disease on their armies. This knowledge was lost, and infectious disease was a major killer in medieval and modern armies, to the point where a military which had implemented Roman sanitation likely would have had a major advantage.
So you don’t really need a scholar who believes in an ancient work because of evidence- you need someone who tries it out, for whatever reason. In the realm of non-fiction, if it actually works, that will lead to them winning in some way.
It’s also worthwhile to consider the impact of new classics on a culture where ideas have to be worded as somehow related to the classics. It’s much easier to say “I agree with Democritus over Parmenides” than it is to say “I disagree with Parmenides.”
That’s a great post, but I think it’s going too far to say that the Romans understood disease. Maybe they did, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that they consciously designed their camps for disease reasons. Note that Cochran doesn’t claim that they understood. Also, he mentions the alternate hypothesis that there was less disease back then. It ought to be clear from the historical record if Rome won by avoiding disease that struck enemy armies. I don’t know the history, but Cochran implies that Rome didn’t have such an edge. Did the enemies have the same sanitation? or did it not make much difference?
I think it’s worth pointing out that early moderns didn’t seem to notice that disease in army camps was a big deal. So the observed failure to copy the Romans probably would not have been mitigated if they’d had an ancient text asserting that the method protected from disease. (Though maybe the assertion that disease mattered in war would have been helpful.) Yes, someone blindly copying Roman camps would have had an advantage, but an advantage not understood propagates slowly.
I think it’s going too far to say that the Romans understood disease
What does “understood disease” mean?
If the Romans knew that setting up an army camp one way leads to half the soldiers unable to step away from the latrines and setting up the camp another way leads to most everyone being fine—does that imply understanding disease?
And, by the way, I wonder if a big factor in comparing Roman to medieval European armies would be the prevailing military strategy. In Roman times warfare was mostly mobile—armies marched, then fought. In medieval times a lot more focus was on sieges where an army stays in one place for a long time. Obviously a marching army is less vulnerable to disease than an army that camps in a single place for months.
Sure, but I think it is going too far even to say that the Romans thought that latrines reduced disease. Do you have ancient sources suggesting otherwise?
Yes, the more mobile the Romans are the less the design of their camps matters. And yet, they got it right and the medievals who needed it got it wrong.
There’s a bit of a discussion in the comments here.
That armies suffered from and could be wiped out by disease outbreaks was well-known in ancient times. And if you think that the design of Roman camps’ sanitation was not caused by the desire to avoid sickness, how do you think it arose?
But I agree that empirical advice of the “Don’t do X or bad things will happen” kind could come purely from repeated experience without any idea of why this is so.
I can think of lots of alternate hypotheses for why Romans had good camp hygiene.
(1) Russo’s answer to everything is that they copied all their technology from the Hellenistic Greeks without copying their understanding (eg, aqueducts). History or archaeology probably records who had these camps first. (2) Perhaps urban disease evolved cities to have good hygiene without understanding and the Romans copied the hygiene to the camps fairly arbitrarily. (3) Or maybe it copied some other urban practice that had non-disease reasons. Or pure superstition. This isn’t a detailed hypothesis, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to reject it.
I am sure you can, but before we get to proposing that it was the gurgling in Russel’s teapot that led the Romans to consider the sanitation of their camps, maybe a bit of a consultation with William of Occam is in order?
That’s a great post, but I think it’s going too far to say that the Romans understood disease.
Sure, I agree that I oversold it, and should have worded it more carefully. But, I’ll point out that “understand disease” is not a single threshold. One could contest the claim that we understand disease. The following claims seem to be individually more likely than not: some educated Romans knew that sanitation and disease were linked, designed sanitation around their knowledge of disease, and that epidemic diseases were caused by invisible agents that were physically transmitted. It seems much more likely than not that Roman knowledge of disease- both theoretical and practical- surpassed medieval knowledge of disease for the majority of the medieval period.
I think it’s worth pointing out that early moderns didn’t seem to notice that disease in army camps was a big deal.
Really? I get the impression that they knew disease inside a city could end the siege in the attacker’s favor, and disease outside a city could end the siege in the defender’s favor. I think they thought it was an unavoidable fact of life, though, which might cash out as ‘not a big deal.’ (For example, I get the impression that the British Navy lost a ton of men to scurvy, but didn’t embark on many explicit attempts to figure out and prevent scurvy because it wasn’t obvious to them that such a thing was possible / they didn’t know where to start.)
Sorry I wasn’t clear, as you can tell from the other thread with Lumifer, but I really do mean to object to the claim that Roman knowledge contributed to the design of the camps.
Yes, early moderns did notice that epidemics were important in sieges, but they didn’t seem to notice that disease mattered at other times.
For fortified towns the following general principles are to be observed. First comes the choice of a very healthy site. Such a site will be high, neither misty nor frosty, and in a climate neither hot nor cold, but temperate; further, without marshes in the neighbourhood. For when the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mists from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of the creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy. Again, if the town is on the coast with a southern or western exposure, it will not be healthy, because in summer the southern sky grows hot at sunrise and is fiery at noon, while a western exposure grows warm after sunrise, is hot at noon, and at evening all aglow.
Springs should be tested and proved in advance in the following ways. If they run free and open, inspect and observe the physique of the people who dwell in the vicinity before beginning to conduct the water, and if their frames are strong, their complexions fresh, legs sound, and eyes clear, the springs deserve complete approval. If it is a spring just dug out, its water is excellent if it can be sprinkled into a Corinthian vase or into any other sort made of good bronze without leaving a spot on it. Again, if such water is boiled in a bronze cauldron, afterwards left for a time, and then poured off without sand or mud being found at the bottom of the cauldron, that water also will have proved its excellence.
And if green vegetables cook quickly when put into a vessel of such water and set over a fire, it will be a proof that the water is good and wholesome. Likewise if the water in the spring is itself limpid and clear, if there is no growth of moss or reeds where it spreads and flows, and if its bed is not polluted by filth of any sort but has a clean appearance, these signs indicate that the water is light and wholesome in the highest degree.
All of the other surviving scraps I can find suggest they had a decent idea what they were talking about, and that they took health seriously. I don’t know of a manual on camp latrine placement, or sewer design, or so on, or any works on germ theories directly. But I’m operating from the presumption that survival is the exception, not the norm. (In particular, I’m not a Roman scholar. There very well might be a manual on camp latrine placement that’s survived to the modern day, which I simply haven’t heard of. I only knew to look in Vitruvius because he’s famous enough that I’ve heard of him.)
It seems to me that if A) their knowledge of health and disease contributed to their design of cities and camps, it should be more likely to see B) health and disease mentioned prominently in design manuals. We do see B, and so that makes me more confident in A.
It seems like a confirmation of “their knowledge contributed to the design of the camps,” though it’s not a confirmation that their knowledge was ‘correct’ or that their knowledge was the primary historical cause of that particular design.
It also affirms that this isn’t just Varro being a hypochondriac, and is evidence for a general trend of Roman design taking health and disease into account in ways that were actually effective.
So, this previous post is also relevant. The Roman legions actually understood how disease worked, and used policies to minimize the impact of infectious disease on their armies. This knowledge was lost, and infectious disease was a major killer in medieval and modern armies, to the point where a military which had implemented Roman sanitation likely would have had a major advantage.
So you don’t really need a scholar who believes in an ancient work because of evidence- you need someone who tries it out, for whatever reason. In the realm of non-fiction, if it actually works, that will lead to them winning in some way.
It’s also worthwhile to consider the impact of new classics on a culture where ideas have to be worded as somehow related to the classics. It’s much easier to say “I agree with Democritus over Parmenides” than it is to say “I disagree with Parmenides.”
That’s a great post, but I think it’s going too far to say that the Romans understood disease. Maybe they did, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that they consciously designed their camps for disease reasons. Note that Cochran doesn’t claim that they understood. Also, he mentions the alternate hypothesis that there was less disease back then. It ought to be clear from the historical record if Rome won by avoiding disease that struck enemy armies. I don’t know the history, but Cochran implies that Rome didn’t have such an edge. Did the enemies have the same sanitation? or did it not make much difference?
I think it’s worth pointing out that early moderns didn’t seem to notice that disease in army camps was a big deal. So the observed failure to copy the Romans probably would not have been mitigated if they’d had an ancient text asserting that the method protected from disease. (Though maybe the assertion that disease mattered in war would have been helpful.) Yes, someone blindly copying Roman camps would have had an advantage, but an advantage not understood propagates slowly.
What does “understood disease” mean?
If the Romans knew that setting up an army camp one way leads to half the soldiers unable to step away from the latrines and setting up the camp another way leads to most everyone being fine—does that imply understanding disease?
And, by the way, I wonder if a big factor in comparing Roman to medieval European armies would be the prevailing military strategy. In Roman times warfare was mostly mobile—armies marched, then fought. In medieval times a lot more focus was on sieges where an army stays in one place for a long time. Obviously a marching army is less vulnerable to disease than an army that camps in a single place for months.
Sure, but I think it is going too far even to say that the Romans thought that latrines reduced disease. Do you have ancient sources suggesting otherwise?
Yes, the more mobile the Romans are the less the design of their camps matters. And yet, they got it right and the medievals who needed it got it wrong.
There’s a bit of a discussion in the comments here.
That armies suffered from and could be wiped out by disease outbreaks was well-known in ancient times. And if you think that the design of Roman camps’ sanitation was not caused by the desire to avoid sickness, how do you think it arose?
But I agree that empirical advice of the “Don’t do X or bad things will happen” kind could come purely from repeated experience without any idea of why this is so.
I can think of lots of alternate hypotheses for why Romans had good camp hygiene.
(1) Russo’s answer to everything is that they copied all their technology from the Hellenistic Greeks without copying their understanding (eg, aqueducts). History or archaeology probably records who had these camps first. (2) Perhaps urban disease evolved cities to have good hygiene without understanding and the Romans copied the hygiene to the camps fairly arbitrarily. (3) Or maybe it copied some other urban practice that had non-disease reasons. Or pure superstition. This isn’t a detailed hypothesis, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to reject it.
I am sure you can, but before we get to proposing that it was the gurgling in Russel’s teapot that led the Romans to consider the sanitation of their camps, maybe a bit of a consultation with William of Occam is in order?
Sure, I agree that I oversold it, and should have worded it more carefully. But, I’ll point out that “understand disease” is not a single threshold. One could contest the claim that we understand disease. The following claims seem to be individually more likely than not: some educated Romans knew that sanitation and disease were linked, designed sanitation around their knowledge of disease, and that epidemic diseases were caused by invisible agents that were physically transmitted. It seems much more likely than not that Roman knowledge of disease- both theoretical and practical- surpassed medieval knowledge of disease for the majority of the medieval period.
Really? I get the impression that they knew disease inside a city could end the siege in the attacker’s favor, and disease outside a city could end the siege in the defender’s favor. I think they thought it was an unavoidable fact of life, though, which might cash out as ‘not a big deal.’ (For example, I get the impression that the British Navy lost a ton of men to scurvy, but didn’t embark on many explicit attempts to figure out and prevent scurvy because it wasn’t obvious to them that such a thing was possible / they didn’t know where to start.)
Sorry I wasn’t clear, as you can tell from the other thread with Lumifer, but I really do mean to object to the claim that Roman knowledge contributed to the design of the camps.
Yes, early moderns did notice that epidemics were important in sieges, but they didn’t seem to notice that disease mattered at other times.
Take a look at De Architectura:
From Book VIII:
All of the other surviving scraps I can find suggest they had a decent idea what they were talking about, and that they took health seriously. I don’t know of a manual on camp latrine placement, or sewer design, or so on, or any works on germ theories directly. But I’m operating from the presumption that survival is the exception, not the norm. (In particular, I’m not a Roman scholar. There very well might be a manual on camp latrine placement that’s survived to the modern day, which I simply haven’t heard of. I only knew to look in Vitruvius because he’s famous enough that I’ve heard of him.)
I don’t see what those quotes add to the Varro quote.
It seems to me that if A) their knowledge of health and disease contributed to their design of cities and camps, it should be more likely to see B) health and disease mentioned prominently in design manuals. We do see B, and so that makes me more confident in A.
It seems like a confirmation of “their knowledge contributed to the design of the camps,” though it’s not a confirmation that their knowledge was ‘correct’ or that their knowledge was the primary historical cause of that particular design.
It also affirms that this isn’t just Varro being a hypochondriac, and is evidence for a general trend of Roman design taking health and disease into account in ways that were actually effective.
Yes, multiple authors are good.