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

I wanted a book specifically about the plague I got a mishmash of so many other things

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 beautiful prose. He has a knack for clarifying the complexities of history and making them interesting. 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 recommend this book to anyone who wants to see the big picture, in this case, of Justinian, the plague, and the Dark Ages.

William Rosen has produced a very fine history of the reign of the Emperor Justinian I, often regarded as the greatest of the Byzantine Emperors. Justinian ruled the Byzantine Empire during the 500s, a period which is often regarded as the end of the classical era and the beginning of what Europeans refer to as the Middle Ages. Rosen is a gifted writer with an excellent ability to create an illuminating anecdote which sums up a life, a city, or a culture in just a few paragraphs or pages. He provides a lot of fascinating material on a variety of subjects pertaining to Justinian and his reign, including the difficulties the Byzantines encountered while constructing the massive basilica of Hagia Sophia, or the consequences of the reorganization of Roman law and legal precedent which created the Corpus Juris Civilis, still the basis for much of Western law to this day. Most impressively, Rosen is able to make his readers recognize the horror of the pandemic which struck much of the Mediterranean world during Justinian's reign, and to understand that we are still living with the long term consequences of that massive disease outbreak. While Rosen is not a professional historian but rather a publishing executive, Justinian's Flea is both scholarly and accessible, and deserves a place on the bookshelves of everyone who is fascinated by the past and intrigued by the still present after effects of long ago events.

I wasn't planning on reading this book at all. Merely saw it on a friend's table yesterday, got curious, and asked if I could read it before she did. Now I feel as if I've eaten a 10-course meal in the space of 20 minutes. This era of history is not usually my thing. I was an International Studies major in college, so I of course covered it in my history classes, and I taught it to my world history students, but it's not an era I would seek out books upon. However, I was fascinated by _Pox Americana_ (I've read it twice as research for my WIP), and the title of this book sounded like it was similar. It wasn't really. But in this case, that isn't a bad thing, because Rosen provided a buffet of information so well presented that you don't need a background in history to take it in. His bottom line is this: (from the back cover blurb) "It was the golden age of Emperor Justinian, who, from his glorious capital of Constantinople, united and reigned over an empire stretching from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements--and the last of them. In A.D. 542, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian was plunged into chaos, and the beginings of a medieval Europe were born." However, the plague itself only occupies perhaps a quarter of the book. The rest of it is background, side-plots, and connections to other ideas and future events. Rosen follows a common thread, loops off on a connected idea, but always manages to bring the reader back the main thread before they get too lost. In the course of the book, Rosen covers "history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology," not to mention tidbits of architecture, art, trade, politics, medicine, and numerous other subjects. Whether he was discussing the changing tactics of warfare or the warring theologies of the early Christian Church (Arian vs. Monophysite vs. orthodoxy/Catholic), his writing went down so smoothly that I almost wasn't aware of how much I was taking in at times. The only sections that I found hard to chew was when he went into great detail about the evolution and biology of Yersinia pestis, that is, bubonic plague. _Justinian's Flea_ is heavy reading, but not overwhelmingly so. It appeals both to serious students of history as well as to the curiosity of the "layman." Grade: A/A+

About the year 540 AD, history seemed to be on the verge of rewinding itself. Emperor Justinian was making Constantinople the wonder of the world, with such wonders as the Hagia Sophia, the imperial armies under General Belisarius were reconquering Italy, and everything seemed to point towards a rebirth of the glories of Rome. But history didn't rewind itself, and Europe traveled off on a new course, one not set from Constantinople. What happened? In this book, author William Rosen examines Emperor Justinian and the world of the early 500s, showing what was happening and why. Then, he begins an examination of The Great Plague of Justinian, and shows how it unraveled the world that existed before it, and laid the groundwork for the world that was to come. Overall, I found this to be a very interesting book. The author did a great job of examining a part of history that I must admit that I have studied very little. He presents the Emperor and the Byzantine Empire in a very interesting and informative manner. If you want to know about the very end of the Classical World, then this is a great book to get. I highly recommend this book!

Great men have changed the world. And so have microbes. And changes fifteen hundred years ago, among ancient societies that are irretrievably lost except to scholars, created contingencies that have made our world what it is, with no way possible to conceive all the "what ifs" that have thereby fallen out to give our current political, religious, and social situation. If you are like me, the history of the sixth century Mediterranean, especially Constantinople, is one vague gray area, but it doesn't have to stay that way. _Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe_ (Viking) is a strange book in many ways. It is not written by an academic with long publishing credentials behind him. William Rosen has publishing credentials, but they are in the business of publishing, where he has been a senior executive. This is his first book as author, and it shows all the enthusiasm of a hobbyist eager to let others know just how interesting is the subject of his particular fascination. It is crammed with religious, military, and political history, along with large doses of epidemiology and bacteriology (to help explain how bubonic plague works) as well as an addendum of entomology (to help explain the equally history-making silkworm). Not every hobbyist could make his obsession interesting, but Rosen's book swarms with so many facts that it is always surprising and never dull. The backbone of the book is a biography of the Emperor Justinian himself. He was born in a Balkan hill town in 482 CE, but an uncle, a general in the imperial guard, adopted him, took him to Constantinople, and got him an education. Justinian was a hard worker, productive to the point of robbing himself of sleep. He did not pay much attention to his appearance, and he tended to asceticism. He stuck around Constantinople to work, and had little interest in visiting his military conquests. He had a considerable ego, revealed in his own writings, and little respect for his predecessors or especially for anyone whom he considered an enemy of the church. Justinian was shrewd in his choice of advisors, and never chose better than his chief general Belisarius, who conquered Vandals in Africa and Ostrogoths in Italy, as well as a late glory in defending Constantinople against the Huns. For all his accomplishments, Justinian could not overcome the devastation caused by the rat, the flea, and the bacterium _Yersinia pseudotuberculosis_. Rosen explains how the bacterium was a relatively harmless type, perhaps causing a mild flu, but then it harnessed the flea as a means of transportation, and while evolving to turn off the defenses of the flea, it became deadly to humans. It was recorded in 540 in the Nile delta, and because this was the grain source for Constantinople, the germs in the fleas on the rats in the ships soon were causing a plague within the city. At least 25 million people were killed in the empire. Justinian himself was infected, but was one of th