The Fate of Rome

Kyle Harper

ISBN 10: 0691166838 / ISBN 13: 9780691166834

Editore: Princeton University Press, 2017

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Verschmutzung / Wasserschaden; Leichte Kratzer / Abnutzungen / Druckstellen. In this riveting history, Kyle Harper shows that disease and environmentalconditions were not just instrumental in the final collapse of the RomanEmpire but were serious problems for centuries before the fall. Harper'scompelling and cautionary tale documents the deadly plagues, fevers, and otherpestilences that ravaged the population time and again, resulting in far moredeaths than ever caused by enemy forces. One wonders - like Edward Gibbon -how the empire managed to last as long as it did.--Eric H. Cline, author of1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Fate of Rome
• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2017
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0691166838
• ISBN 13: 9780691166834
• Rilegatura: Hardcover
• Condizione: Fair
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Ecology

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

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.

Informazioni sull?autore

Kyle Harper is professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425 and From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. He lives in Norman, Oklahoma.