Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire
Justinian’s Flea: The First Fantastic Plague and the End of the Roman Empire Books
Product Description
The epic tale of the collision between one of nature’s smallest organisms and history’s mightiest empire
During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born.
At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were absolutely unoccupied. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally finished, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian’s Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the small known event that changed the course of a continent.
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I would just like to top out that the title is skewed. If you want to place “Justinian” and “End of the Roman Empire” in the same sentence then you should at least place the dates. If his arguement is, say, Justinian is the last right Latin Roman Emperor, fine. Tell me why. But, in reality, Justinian was far from being the last Roman Emperor. Justinian reigned in the 6th century, even as the Empire continued and did not fall till the 15th Century.
Rating: 1 / 5
Justinian’s Flea
William Rosen
The cover art is brilliant. And that is the last excellent thing I can say about this book.
This is the most disconnected, disjointed, confused, and largely irrelevant book I have ever read. It’s as if he shuffled his note cards before writing. And, on top of that his style is deathly dull.
This book purports to be a history of the first fantastic plague pandemic in Western Europe. That is why I bought it. Unfortunately the plague doesn’t enter until the last 80 pages. He proposes to relate how the first plague pandemic affected the structure of Europe. This is done in the last six pages
By the side of the way to the key last pages he relates a list of all the emperors, generals, battles, and invaders of the first 700 yrs. BCE. There is a long chapter on architecture. There is a long chapter on microbiology. We get an analysis of the changing nature of war, religion, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
He borrows heavily from Procopius who is mentioned or quoted on nearly every page. He does manage to quote William James, Henry Adams, Einstein, H. D. Thoreau, Woodrow Wilson and setting a new mark of total nonsense, E. Velikovsky, and many others. Like most of the book these quotes are largely irrelevant, redundant, or at a tangent.
My advice, read Procopius for the eyewitness account, and, unless you need a sleep aid, avoid this book like the plague.
Rating: 1 / 5
JUSTINIAN’S FLEA is about the bridge time when the 500 year ancient Roman Empire (not to be confused with the Roman Republic which preceded it) was breakdown & the darkness of the Early Middle Ages loomed on the horizon. After this, the divided Roman Empire would became Holy & Constantinople would end up Istanbul.
This book is like that Charles Willson Peale painting of him holding back a curtain so you can see all the wonders of his museum beyond… except it’s William Rosen who’s penned a mesmerizing historical tale of a bacterium that found its perfect vector in an itty-bitty critter who hitched a ride on a stout rat who was after the grain aboard the ships that plied the ports, which all came together one hot summer in a fine & crowded city that stood athwart the routes to the mysterious East & the rugged West of the known world.
As with all really excellent history books, JUSTINIAN’S FLEA takes up the tale of one thing which, naturally, involves all sorts of other things like the science of contagions & doctors: past & bestow; populace migrations & their make up; the architecture of religion & entertainment; military engagements & their consequences, the birth of fantastic religions, & much, much more!
Open the covers of JUSTINIAN’S FLEA & be transported back to another time & place as you follow this well-written tale of the first Black Death, how it likely came to be & what happened because of it. Reminded me of Thomas Dormandy’s The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis, & John Kelly’s Medieval real-life thriller: The Fantastic Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (P.S.).
For a broad & elegant view of the forces that made this particular time, place & natural catastrophe, JUSTINIAN’S FLEA is highly not compulsory. If you want more of this author, dive into The Most Powerful Thought in the World: A Tale of Steam, Industry, and Invention.
Rating: 5 / 5
Williami Rosen appears to be a renaisance man, he has a deep understanding of the history, the archtitecture (Hagia Sophia), the science (bacteria to flea to rat), and the context of the era he describes and puts it all into elegant and gorgeous prose. He has a knack for clarifying the complexities of history and making them fascinating. This book gave me the same deep feeling of learning from a master as did Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. The plague chapters are particularly relevent in these times of H1N1 virus. I would highly urge this book to anyone who wants to see the huge picture, in this case, of Justinian, the plague, and the Dark Ages.
Rating: 5 / 5
I had a trying time getting through this book. The problem is that their is a tremendous tale behind all of this history and the author failed to tell it in any sort of readable way. Instead we are lead through hundreds of pages of infintesimal detail, written in a stiff, wordy manner, about many things, some of which do not play into the tale at all. It wasn’t until the second half of the book before Rosen touched on the details of the epidemic in any way. The book reads like a college thesis — one in which the author has distress getting to the top. Meanwhile, there is a fantastic and terrifying tale here that is mired in Rosen’s stodgy presentation. History is exciting! It everlastingly has been. It is writers like this that make it seem otherwise.
Rating: 3 / 5