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Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, author Rosen tells 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 victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam. Emperor Justinian had reunified Rome's fractured 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 beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes. 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 nearly killed Justinian himself, bringing about one of the great hinge moments in history.--From publisher description.… (more)
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This book is primarily about the reign of Justinian (482-565 A.D.) with the bubonic plague ("The Devil") as a key world-changing component in the second half of the book. There is a lot of contextual history provided, which some critics have
Prior to the plague, the most significant event in Justinian's reign was the Nika riots of the Blues and the Greens, the Roman equivalent of today's football hooligans, destroying half of Constantinople and killing tens of thousands. That history and the politics surrounding it is itself fascinating.
However, the detailed tangents on anything remotely touching Justinian and Constantinople are a bit much. Detailed accounts of Belisarius's conquests, Jewish history, silk production in China, etc. are unnecessary and add nothing. The supposed focus of the book-- the bubonic plague and its consequences-- are not even introduced until the last half of the book. Its impact on Constantinople itself and the various social structures and religion in the Empire is hardly mentioned. The economic and geopolitical impacts are the focus of the few chapters devoted to the plague.
4 million people died within two years. The plague shrunk the population of Europe and any area the Empire touched. As Persians took advantage of the Roman Empire's weakness to gain territory in Anatolia and beyond, eventually they also succumbed to the plague. The plague led to a lack of labor supply and an invention of better tools and even an increase in property rights among the farming peasants in Western Europe. The Arabs, who due to desert climate and remoteness were isolated from the plague, end up reaping the advantages conquering Persian and European territory and spreading Islam.
Justinian was "the emperor who never sleeps." Justinian's contributions to society were numerous. He re-conquered African and Italian territories and enlarged the empire. He set out to reform all of Roman law, commissioning the Codex Justianius and the Corpus Juris Civilis, which became the legal standard for the West (and was used by the Continental Congress in drafting the U.S. Constitution). Justinian's wife was a very licentious woman, as were many of the women chronicled in this book. The morals of Rome really declined in the 4th century. It was odd in that leading figures staked out theological positions and fought, often violently, for them, but were morally void of any impact of that theology.
I give this book 3 stars out of 5 because it was a lot of information about nothing pertaining to the Plague or Constantinople or the birth of Europe. There is a such thing as too much context.
By Elena Booze
Justinian’s Flea is about the bubonic plague, and the fall of Rome. It is also about the birth of Europe and the emperor of Rome, Justinian.
Justinian’s Flea includes the enemies of Rome, and their impact on the country. Also, it includes the
I thought that Justinian’s Flea was very interesting, however, worded in a way that made it slow to read. I liked how it included many interesting details, like how Theodora was the daughter of a bear-keeper, and had her first child at the age of sixteen. I thought that this information made the book interesting, and made me feel that the author had done very, very extensive research. I think that Justinian’s Flea went on a little too long with all of the detail, though. Information about the actual plague was not provided until past half of the book. I enjoyed reading this book, but I think that it was written for mainly adults, and requires patience to finish.
Rosen does a nice job telling us how the world of Justinian came to be; very little of this book actually covers the epidemiology of the plague (although it is covered in good detail). He also makes some interesting conjectures. The plague was less virulent in China, a country very nearly like the Roman Empire in multiethnic composition and expanse. China would survive this plague, however, while Rome deteriorated. After major cities were substantially depopulated and the armies of the empire defeated by an unseen adversary, Islam took hold in the largely plague-free Arabian peninsula (plague likes rat-infested ships to transport) and proceeded to expand quickly into Palestine as well as Belisarius' recently-conquered Libya. Rosen suggests that without the plague, Byzantine armies could have squashed the upstart religion before it could get rolling.
Justinian's reign saw the last vestiges of Roman glory. The plague made it possible for the ever-present outsiders to make headway against the empire and shatter its foundations. Not until one of these external tribes, the Franks, were charged with the protection of the new "Holy Roman Empire" under Charlemagne would setbacks be reversed, but by then the Empire was a very different creature indeed as the rise of nationalism brought its own challenges.
The historical sections are a pretty straightforward account of the leading events and figures, but Rosen does a great job stringing together many different narrative strands into a compelling story. The sections on the plague were, for me at least, terra incognita. The author goes pretty deep into the science here and while parts of it were over my humanities major head, I enjoyed them nonetheless.
Rosen concludes the book with an account of the rise of Islam. This was, for me, the main point of the book. Without Justinian's flea, and the resultant plagues that hit the Persian and Byzantine worlds, the entire Islamic empire would have been implausible. I'm not sure this qualifies as a random event, but it does make the contrast between historical determinism and human agency blurry for me.
If more authors wrote as engagingly as Rosen, history classes across the US would be filled to overflowing.
HOWEVER, if you want to read a book about Justinian's Flea (emphasis on the possessive!) in order to discover how the plague impacted and possibly ended the Roman empire of antiquity, this book will not do. This book just tells you that the plague killed lots of people. There is no analysis of why the plague did or did not weaken Rome's army more than those of its enemies or how a decline in population impacted Roman society. Instead, you will wade through pages and pages on topics such as the Empire's efforts to import silk worms, the various Christian theological debates raging Justinian's life, and the construction defects of the Hagia Sofia, and then, in the last two pages, be informed that the plague caused the atomization of Europe into nation states. Maybe it did, but you'll need to read some other books to learn why.
For anyone who slept through their world history class when it was covering the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Alans, Suevi and Vandals, the first 1/4
Chapters 12 & 13 cover the story of the discovery of silk in the west, its production, trade history, and the subsequent Silk Road, and is one of the best summaries I've seen covering the details (if not the romance) of these aspects of the early history of silk. (I'm adding these two chapters to a recommended reading list I maintain on the Silk Road for students who need to know how many tons of silk were carried west by the average caravan).
And finally, if you want a description of how the plague 'worked' that is too biologically technical for the lay reader but probably too basic for a biologist, turn to Part III, Chapters 7-9.
In short, some bite-sized sections stand out, but as an Intro-to-Epilogue read, I have to concur with the majority of readers, I found the too frequent to's and fro's unsettling.
The author vividly tells the story of how the Roman Empire got to the point of having Justinian as Emperor; he describes the situation by which Justinian ascended to the purple and then
Yet, as indicated from the beginning, a plague is on the horizon. The author also describes what was known at his time regarding the development of Y. pestis and what it did to people. He then described how the plague overtook the Roman Empire and the devastation it wrought. The epilogue considers the later battle at Yarmuk between Heraclius' forces and the Muslim invaders and how the Empire lost most of its territory, and its ancient heart, in no small part as an effect of the plague.
The historical narrative here is generally excellent, but its pathogenesis and discussion of the plague itself could use some updating; Kyle Harper spends a lot of time talking about what we have learned about the plague since, and agrees about the devastation and import of the black plague. The role of the ferret, the newest and best theory of the real catalyst for black death outbreaks, is not really manifest here.
A great narrative which could use a refresh/update for the 2020s.