Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe (Hardback)
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|Short Description for Justinian's Flea A richly told story of the collision between natureÂ's smallest organism and historyÂ's mightiest empire The Emperor Justinian reunified RomeÂ'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 worldÂ's most beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most...
Full description- Publisher: Viking Books
- Published: 10 May 2007
- Format: Hardback 367 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: History Of Medicine | Infectious & Contagious Diseases | Medieval History
- ISBN 13: 9780670038558 ISBN 10: 0670038555
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Full description for Justinian's Flea
A richly told story of the collision between natureÂ's smallest organism and historyÂ's mightiest empire The Emperor Justinian reunified RomeÂ'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 worldÂ's most beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring RomeÂ'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 nearly killed Justinian himself. In JustinianÂ's Flea, William Rosen tells the story of historyÂ'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 great hinge moments in history, one that will appeal to readers of John KellyÂ's The Great Mortality, John BarryÂ's The Great Influenza, and Jared DiamondÂ's Collapse.
