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.A narrative history that melds contemporary sources with modern disciplines, Justinian's Flea is a unique account of one of history's great turning points - the summer of 542 - revealed through the experiences of the remarkable individuals whose lives are a window onto a remarkable age- Justinian, his general Belisarius, the greatest soldier between Caesar and Saladin his architect, Anthemius 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 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. Before Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that carries bubonic plague, was finished, both the Roman and Persian empires were easy pickings for the armies of Muhammad on their conquering march out of Arabia. With the death of twenty-five million people, the Roman Empire, under her last great emperor, Justinian, was decimated. In the middle of the sixth century, the world's smallest organism collided with the world's mightiest empire. 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 Kelly's The Great Mortality, John Barry's The Great Influenza, and Jared Diamond's Collapse.Popular history at its best- an epic story in which the newly united Roman Empire under Justinian is decimated by bubonic plague. Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire Kindle Edition by William Rosen (Author) Format: Kindle Edition 280 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle 12.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0. In Justinian's Flea, William Rosen tells the story 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 a path of victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed 5,000 people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. At his capital in Constantinople, he built the world's most beautiful building, married the most powerful empress, and wrote the empire's most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes for the next five hundred years. The emperor Justinian reunified Rome's fractured empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals who had separated Italy, Spain, and North Africa from imperial rule.

Justinian's Flea by William Rosen