Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe
Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe Books
Product Description
A richly told tale of the collision between nature’s smallest organism and history’s mightiest empire
The Emperor Justinian reunified Rome’s broke empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals who had separated Italy, Spain, and North Africa from imperial rule. In his capital at Constantinople he built the world’s most gorgeous building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome’s fortunes for the next five hundred years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed five thousand people a day in Constantinople and near killed Justinian himself.
In Justinian’s Flea, William Rosen tells the tale of history’s first pandemic—a plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed tens of millions, devastated the empires of Persia and Rome, left a path of victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam. Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, Rosen offers a sweeping narrative of one of the fantastic hinge moments in history, one that will fascinate to readers of John Kelly’s The Fantastic Mortality, John Barry’s The Fantastic Bug, and Jared Diamond’s Collapse.
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Rosen starts by telling us that Constantine customary Christianity as the state religion, which, of course, Constantine did not do. He legalized Christianity, but it was another emperor, Theodosius, who made it the official state religion.
If he starts off with such a careless and inaccurate remark, I can’t place any faith in what follows.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book is fantastic. Its a narrative so if you don’t like dry factual reading this is for you. It gets bogged down in the details, especially on microbiology, but that’s the top.
I consider this a must read for anyone who is interested in why europe is deliniated, and a understanding the later roman empire at its very end.
Rating: 5 / 5
The book itself in parts is a fantastic read. It is suppose to be about the plague of Justinian which the novelist feels weakened the Easter Roman Empire when its Emperor Justinian may possibly have rebuilt the Western Roman Empire. This according to the novelist was the cause of the fragmented Europe we have today and the rise of Islam. After reading the book I still want to see more exact analysis of what the disease did to the Empire other then it killed half the populace.
Also parts are so terribly off topic for example discussing Hagia Sophia let me just left wondering what he was talking about and why!
The section on the diseases and how it worked needed better explanation. I just may possibly not really follow his explanation.
I also reckon it needs more work to clarify why the plague did not affected Plates as much as the Roman Empire. I would reckon the Chinese canals used both for irrigation and transport of excellent may possibly have carried the rats even better then in European ships and wagons.
Also in the book some facts the book lists need some checking too.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book is more than history, it is history at its best, written over a broad and fascinating theme about an obscure time period and involving a very original thesis. It is about the borth of the thought of Europe. The tale starts with the decline and fall of Rome. Intricate and incredible details are unearthed and brought to the readers attention as the tale unfolds, tender quickly between Rome, Byzantium and the barbarian invasions.
Evnetually things settle in Constantinople and the person of Justinian and his prostitute wife. The tale moves from here to the hero general Belisarius and his problems with the emperor, Justinian, who sought after to retake the Western empire and fend off problems with Persia and Africa. One chapter examines bacteria and plague.
The book then takes the reader through the plauge that arrive in 542 and its consequences in Alexandria and for the empire. The destruction of the Ostrogoths and wars hostile to the Lombards and battles in the east.
The last section of the book examines the emergence of the Arabs from Arabia, the rise of Heraclius and the battle of Yarmuk in 636. The thesis hinges on the plague that prevented Justinian from reconquering the Roman empire and instead allowed European states to develop.
Even if the reader doesn’t follow the argument entirely the writing is brilliant and is with such skill that it stops being just history and instead reads like a fantastic novel.
Seth J. Frantzman
Rating: 5 / 5
A excellent book. Well written from a modern perspectivre.
A small too much of the scientific detail about the plague; most of which I already knew and not really necessary in an historical account.
Rating: 4 / 5