Lead Poisoning In Ancient Rome

Plumbum: The cause of Western Roman Empire’s fall? “Roma Invicta”. It’s a proud phrase for the Romans that carries the meaning of ‘Unconquered Rome’. It signifies the glory of the empire and its striving economy, its colosseums holding thousands of crowd for ceremonies, its gladiators fighting in the arena to their death, its great aqueducts carrying water for the city of Rome, its busy port filled with traders from the far east of China to the cold, northern Germanic lands, its senators debating for the future of the empire and its mighty legionaries, marching on the streets of the great Rome. The romans can be proud of what they had achieve, and they even deserve it, but perhaps they were too proud of themselves. Their fall had create a …show more content…
Thus, from this perspective, supported with the evidence, the theory of lead poisoning in Roman people through water consumption might be false. Despite the fact that the low presence of lead in the water supply, we cannot just simply eliminate the belief considering the Romans, especially the aristocrats, due to their habits of drinking an enormous amount of wine. What does the wine had anything to do with the lead poisoning? There were a few possible approach on how the lead contaminate the wine in Rome according to an online article from the University of Chicago ("Lead Poisoning and Rome." Lead Poisoning and Rome. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.). First, the wine may be enhanced with defrutum, a concentrated grape juice, to hide the defects in the products. The defrutum was cooked in large metal pots, some made of lead or copper or tin mixed with lead in its composition, to create a concentrate from pressed grape juice. The acidic grape juice turns the oxidized lead in the cooking vessel into lead acetate, a sweet tasting chemical compound, which made the defrutum cooked in the lead vessel tastes sweet. The defrutum, used in wine and to preserve foods, contain a measurably high lead content, around 1 gram per liter, increasing its probability to cause lead poisoning. Moreover, the lead might also ‘pollute’ the wine through the dilution process of the wine, as for what the Romans were famous for. They dilute the wine with the contaminated water to a ratio of 1:2 (wine: water). Now, there’s a more likely chance of lead poisoning because of the amount of water consumed with the wine. The composition of the wine and the defrutum, along with its high amount of consumption, will most likely cause the Romans to have diseases associated with lead