There is a story about Rome and Rome’s demise which has some compelling but not unrefuted evidence, even if insufficient, it should be deeply instructive to our lives in this new chemical age. My imagination sparked when I was playing with a bit of the etymology around plumbing and the periodic table of the elements. For all those who might not know ‘pb’ is used to represent lead on the periodic table from the latin plumbum. Lead is a very dense and malleable substance that has been used historically for many purposes. The word is also used to great import in our language and the deeper structures of our thought. In verb form “to plumb” is to use a lead weighted object to determine the depths of waters, especially those difficult to see through. We still use a metaphor of “plumbing the depths” as I’ve used above in a psychological or attentional sense to analyze something deeply. Lead was both an actual and metaphoric base for alchemical pursuits. The alchemical transformation of lead into gold would have been called “Chrysopoeia”. The metaphor gets even more meaningful as the psychological transformation described by Jung.
"The gold is in the dark. And one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious”
I likewise hope that looking closely at the deepest plagues of ourselves and society will be an enlightening pursuit. Expanding the metaphorical space even further, “Lucifer” was also the Roman word for Venus or the morning star. The real planet we now know shines brightly in our skies from its mountains encased in lead:
“Lead sulfide is vaporized on the planet surface, rises as a mist, condenses in the cooler Venus clouds, and settles as a “shiny, metallic frost on the tops of the mountains”, making the Venus highlands more reflective than lower elevations.1”
It is even more peculiar that the bible uses Venusian terms such as “morning star,” to refer to both Lucifer and Christ. Perhaps intentionally we are confronted with the need to always discern what is a true bringer of light from a shiny though toxic imitation.
“I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” Jesus in Revelation 22:16
In this moment of expanding this term in various timeframes and contexts I am feeling something like awe at the mysteries of becoming sometimes hidden in the simplest of words or ideas.
The lead related riddle I want to focus on, however, is this: Lead is highly toxic for human consumption and yet we use “plumb” and “plumbing” from Latin origins which implies a widespread use of the substance in their aqueducts and piping infrastructure. We tell stories of the fall of Rome that include the weakness of the military, a divided empire that did not coordinate, inflation that separated rich and poor, and significant political corruption. I do not contend with any of these here but I want to ask: how much of those causes are themselves effects of lead, or something else, undermining the health of all Romans, and especially the leading aristocrats2. A 2021 study shows clearly that lead concentration in Roman bones peaked just prior to the demise of the empire3:
And if lead was in their bones we can safely assume it was also affecting their brains and their behavior. Likely it affected the aristocrats even more than the average person. This is because aristocrats were fond of reduced grape and other fruit sauces which were made in lead cauldrons4. Some seemed to know that lead was poisonous and called lead poisoning over time “Saturnism” because of its depressive mood effects and the association of those with the god. Apparently the knowledge was not distributed widely and lead was used more broadly than in just water, wine and food preparation. Those alone cover a large aspect of many lives, yet, lead was used as part of makeup and by some even as part of a female inserted and removable contraceptive device5.
An interesting argument against lead’s contribution to Rome’s fall places more weight for the fall of population on reluctance to get married. Perhaps as social scientists they did not think through the likely effects of impaired physiology has on the desire to procreate. In my understanding there is a deep connection between the ability and the desire to procreate. Reduction of fecundity with a concomitant loss of desire is a signal of an environment going against its human inhabitants and that signal seems ever more relevant for our current times.
Unfortunately, the impact of lead on cognition seems to create a sort of irreversible trap. To say it a bit bluntly, even had there been a will to investigate and remake the Roman infrastructure, those in the position to act would have already been affected cognitively and would have been too sick, too apathetic or too stupid to do the right kinds of things for the empire to pull away from its toxic relationship with lead. At some point that relationship only plays out as it did with a dramatic decline in centralized power and weaknesses exploitable by outsiders.
I believe this perspective on the impact of lead on Rome begs broader questions. Firstly does this not undermine the value of civilization to its inhabitants? Secondly, including lead, what in our current environments might be acting with similar costs which we take for granted as part of the environment or terroir we grow in. I maintain a growing list of culprits disrupting our physiology and our cognition. Our culture is not free from the kind of cognitive trap the Romans faced when we undermine our physiology and our intelligence.
I wonder even if there is a sufficient mass of receptive and capable minds to listen and act or are we articulating the inevitable as the momentum of bad decisions and declining intelligence plays out in our lifetimes. I tell myself and others that we are just beginning to wake up, yet the history of man is replete with counter examples.
Nevin, Rick. Lucifer Curves: The Legacy of Lead Poisoning . BookBaby. 2016
P. Charlier, F. Bou Abdallah, R. Bruneau, S. Jacqueline, A. Augias, R. Bianucci, A. Perciaccante, D. Lippi, O. Appenzeller, K.L. Rasmussen, Did the Romans die of antimony poisoning? The case of a Pompeii water pipe (79 CE), Toxicology Letters, Volume 281, 2017, Pages 184-186,ISSN 0378-4274, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2017.07.876
Lead in Archeological Human Bones Reflecting Historical Changes in Lead Production https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c00614
Lead Poisoning and Rome https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html
Soranus of Ephesus 60-65 Soranus on Contraception and Abortion http://www.ldysinger.com/@texts/0130_soranus/02_gyn_60-65.htm