Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe - Hardcover

William Rosen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224073699 ISBN 13: 9780224073691

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2007

Synopsis

In the middle of the sixth century, the world's smallest organism collided with the world's mightiest empire. Twenty-five million corpses later, the Roman Empire, under her last great emperor, Justinian, was decimated. Before Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that carries bubonic plague, was through, both the Roman and Persian empires were easy pickings for the armies of Muhammad on their conquering march out of Arabia. In its wake, the plague - history's first pandemic - marked the transition from the age of Mediterranean empires to the age of European nation-states - from antiquity to the medieval world.

Justinian's Flea is the story of that collision, a narrative history that weaves together evolutionary microbiology, architecture, military history, geography, rat and flea ecology, jurisprudence, theology, epidemiology, and the economics of the silk trade. The climax of Justinian's Flea - the summer of 542, when Constantinople witnessed the death of 5,000 of its citizens every day - is revealed through the experiences of the remarkable individuals whose lives are a window onto a remarkable age: Justinian himself, of course, but also his doppelgänger, the Persian Shah Khusro Anushirvan, whose empire would be so weakened by plague that it essentially vanished; his general Belisarius, the greatest soldier between Caesar and Saladin, whose conquests marked the end of imperial rule in Italy and Africa; his architect, Anthemius, the mathematician-engineer who built Constantinople's Hagia Sophia (and whose brother, Alexander, was the great physician of the plague years); Tribonian, the jurist who created the Justinianic Code, the source of Europe's tradition of Civil Law; and, finally, his empress Theodora, the one-time prostitute who became co-ruler of the empire, the most politically powerful woman in European history until Elizabeth I.

Melding contemporary accounts with modern disciplines, Justinian's Flea is a unique account of one of history's great hinge moments.

About this title

Review:

"Ambitious and exciting, witty and elegant, this is a big book in every sense, and packed with big ideas. William Rosen takes one of history's great cause-and-effect problems and turns it into a work that is entertaining and illuminating in equal measure. Along the way he comes up with interpretations of a little-understood era that delight and sometimes dazzle. From the theological puzzles of Gnosticism, neo-Platonism and the Arian heresy through the pathology of a flea-bite to the appropriate use of heavy cavalry, the complicated and the convoluted become comprehensible... and fun." (Phil Craig, Co-Author Of Finest Hour: The Battle Of Britain, And Trafalgar: The Men, The Battle, The Storm)

"William Rosen doesn´t just give us the most believable, the most human and the most fully rounded Justinian ever. He also conjures up a vivid picture of the age, in a compelling style that makes his weighty learning light." (Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Author Of Millennium And Civilizations)

"

What a richly detailed and thought-provoking book! I got stuck into

William Rosen's fascinating chronicle with all the appetite of a flea

settling on the brawny arm of one of Justinian's cataphracts.

" (Robert lacey, co-author of The Year 1000)

"We live at a time when the Pope's quotation of a Byzantine emperor can cause an international incident. William Rosen's fascinating new book offers a timely portrait of the greatest Byzantine emperor of them all - and explains, in compelling detail, how the golden age of Constantinople was blotted out by a catastrophe as momentous as any in history." (Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and Persian Fire)

"Justinian's Flea is narrative history writing at its best. Breathtaking in its scope, the book presents a confident mix of history, science, architecture, theology, military strategy, law, engineering and medicine to tell the story of how plague transformed the classical world and gave birth to mediaeval Europe. William Rosen's canvas stretches from China to Spain, and Britain to Arabia, and his intriguing cast of characters includes emperors, priests, soldiers, and engineers as well as rats, fleas and silkworms. Justinian's Flea transforms our understanding of many key events in the history of the last two thousand years, from the decline of Rome to the rise of Islam and beyond." (Karl Sabbagh, author of The Riemann Hypothesis)

From the Publisher:

Popular history at its best: an epic story in which the newly united Roman Empire under Justinian is decimated by bubonic plague.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0224073699
• ISBN 13: 9780224073691
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 377