In this volume, 12 scholars from various disciplines - have produced a comprehensive account of the pandemic's origins, spread, and mortality, as well as its economic, social, political, and religious effects.

How devastating viruses, pandemics, and other natural catastrophes swept through the far-flung Roman Empire and helped to bring down one of the mightiest civilizations of the ancient world Here is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. The Fate of Rome is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome’s power—a story of nature’s triumph over human ambition. Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes readers from Rome’s pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted. Harper describes how the Romans were resilient in the face of enormous environmental stress, until the besieged empire could no longer withstand the combined challenges of a “little ice age” and recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague. A poignant reflection on humanity’s intimate relationship with the environment, The Fate of Rome provides a sweeping account of how one of history’s greatest civilizations encountered and endured, yet ultimately succumbed to the cumulative burden of nature’s violence. The example of Rome is a timely reminder that climate change and germ evolution have shaped the world we inhabit—in ways that are surprising and profound.

From the acclaimed author of Miracle Cure and The Third Horseman, the epic story of the collision between one of nature's smallest organisms and history's mightiest empire During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born. At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian's Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the little known event that changed the course of a continent.

"Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanitys path to control over infectious diseaseone where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependentand inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself."--

This book shows how bubonic plague and smallpox helped end the Hittite Empire, the Bronze Age in the Near East and later the Carthaginian Empire. The book will examine all the possible infectious diseases present in ancient times and show that life was a daily struggle for survival either avoiding or fighting against these infectious disease epidemics. The book will argue that infectious disease epidemics are a critical link in the chain of causation for the demise of most civilizations in the ancient world and that ancient historians should no longer ignore them, as is currently the case.

Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity brings together scientific, archaeological and historical evidence on the interplay of social change and environmental phenomena at the end of Antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages, covering the period ca. 300-800 AD. It gives a new impetus to the study of the environmental history of this crucial period of transition between two major epochs in premodern history. The volume contains both systematic overviews of the previous scholarship and available data, as well as a number of interdisciplinary case studies. It covers a wide range of topics, including the histories of landscape, climate, disease and earthquakes, all intertwined with social, cultural, economic and political developments. Contributors are Daniel Abel-Schaad , Francesca Alba-Sánchez, Flavio Anselmetti, José Antonio López-Sáez, Daniel Ariztegui, Brunhilda Brushulli, Yolanda Carrión Marco, Alexandra Chavarría, Petra Dark, Carmen Fernández Ochoa, Martin Finné, Asuunta Florenzano, Ralph Fyfe,Didier Galop, Benjamin Graham, John Haldon, Kyle Harper, Richard Hodges, Adam Izdebski, Katarina Kouli, Inga Labuhn, Tamara Lewit, Anna Maria Mercuri, Alessia Masi, Lucas McMahon, Lee Mordechai, Mario Morellón, Timothy Newfield, Almudena Orejas Saco del Valle, Leonor Peña-Chocarro, Sebastián Pérez-Díaz, Eleonora Regattieri, Stephen Rippon, Neil Roberts, Laura Sadori, Abigail Sargent, Gaia Sinopoli, Paolo Squatriti, Giovanni Stranieri, Raymond van Dam, Bernd Wagner, Mark Whittow, Penelope Wilson, Jessie Woodbridge. See inside the book.

Late antiquity: decline or transformation, conflict or interaction? Late antiquity is the period (c.300 - c.800) in which barbarian invasions ended Roman Empire in Western Europe by the fifth century and Arab invasions ended Roman rule over the eastern and southern Mediterranean coasts by the seventh century. Asking 'what, where, and when' Gillian Clark presents an introduction to the concept of late antiquity and the events of its time. Not only a period of cultural clashes, political restructurings, and geographical controversies, Clark also demonstrates the sheer richness and diversity of religious life as well as the significant changes to trade, economy, archaeology, and towns. Encapsulating significant developments through vignettes, she reflects upon the period by asking the question 'How much can we recognise in the world of late antiquity?' ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Late Antiquity, once known only as the period of protracted decline in the ancient world (Bas-Empire), has now become a major research area. In recent years, a wide-ranging historiographic debate on Late Antiquity has also begun. Replacing Gibbon’s categories of decline and decadence with those of continuity and transformation has not only brought to the fore the concept of the Late Roman period, but has made the alleged hiatus between the Roman, Byzantine and Mediaeval ages less important, while also driving to the margins the question of the end of the Roman Empire. This has broadened the scope of research on Late Antiquity enormously and made the issue of periodization of crucial significance. The resulting debate has escaped the confines of Europe and now embraces almost all historiographic cultures around the world. This book sheds new light on this debate, collecting papers given at the 22nd International Congress of Historical Sciences (CISH/ICHS) in Jinan, China. They recall key moments of the discovery of the world of Late Antiquity, and show how it is possible to reach a definition of an age, analysing different sectors of history, using disparate sources, and with the guidance of very varied interpretative models.

A major new history of the violent, protracted conflict between ancient Athens and Sparta.

This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers' accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire's growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.