The Fate of Rome

Climate change is reshaping our world. Even academic disciplines are affected, as Kyle Harper's new book demonstrates. New data about the environment and new insight into the development and spread of diseases help us to understand better our world today. This evidence also sheds new light on the ancient world. In this groundbreaking work, Harper rewrites the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire with an expanded cast of characters. Alongside Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, Justinian, Visigoths, and Huns, the author has added the forces of nature that contributed to the collapse: environmental change and pandemic disease.The climate story begins during the rise, not the fall, of Rome. The period from 200 BCE to 150 CE, Harper argues, saw a “warm, wet, and stable climate regime rightly known as the Roman Climate Optimum” (p. 40). During these years, favorable conditions dominated in the Mediterranean, a climate zone that is otherwise unpredictable and susceptible to extremes of temperature and scarcity of water. Evidence for the RCO is found in ice cores that trace solar radiation, mineral deposits from caves across the region, and alpine tree records. Harper combines this new evidence with traditional literary sources that further attest to (now unusual) spring and summer floods of the Tiber and to higher agricultural yields than were possible in later years. Coinciding with the peak period of peace in the Roman Empire, the RCO helped the Roman world achieve unprecedented population growth and economic success.Nevertheless, as Harper notes, disease was always an issue for the Romans, both despite, and because of, their economic success. Urbanization and developing trade networks facilitated the spread of diseases. Seasonal mortality (tracked by the date of death as recorded on Christian inscriptions) points to a low life expectancy due to diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. The end of the Roman Climate Optimum further tested the population with new environmental challenges that added to the stress caused by disease. The Antonine Plague of the second century CE was the first pandemic in the Roman world. Caused by the introduction of a new pathogen (likely small pox), the plague spread across the Mediterranean in just a few years. In the mid-third century CE, the Plague of Cyprian was the second major incursion of disease, either a strain of influenza or Ebola, in Harper's judgment. Harper argues that this plague was also empire-wide and devastated the population. In his view, the Plague of Cyprian directly led to the invasions of the 250s CE along the Euphrates, Danube, and Rhine frontiers as the enemies of Rome exploited the greatly reduced Roman defenses. Evidence of economic problems also demonstrates the impact of plagues and climate change in the second and third centuries. Ironically, it had been the unified Mediterranean economic system that had allowed for the introduction and spread of disease.Climate and disease interacted in unprecedented ways in the sixth century CE. Harper connects the origin of the Plague of Justinian to the start of the “Late Antique Little Ice Age,” as lower summer temperatures allowed the Yersinia pestis bacterium to move from Asia to the Mediterranean along established trade routes. The bubonic plague remained endemic in the Mediterranean for more than two centuries. Floods and crop failure brought about by climate change was combined with disease-induced depopulation. Italy was left unable to maintain systems of the past. Urban populations were decimated and rural lands that had been cultivated for centuries were abandoned.These changing climate and disease regimes in the Mediterranean help us to understand why Frankish Gaul turned to the north and the Levant turned east—both turning away from the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire held on in much reduced form in Constantinople and the east, but the rise of Islam definitively shifted the focus away from the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean was no longer the center of a unified world.Throughout the book, Harper marshals diverse scientific data and draws upon a deep knowledge of the literary sources for the history of the period. Most impressive is Harper's ability to weave into a traditional account of late Antiquity new information about the forces of nature. His writing is clear and aims to reach a wide audience. To cite just one example, as a model for understanding the routes that transmitted new diseases to the Roman world, Harper draws upon the trade in exotic animals that were brought to Rome for entertainment—a macro example to help us understand the routes of micro-organisms. Evidence is also neatly summarized in charts and maps throughout the text (although I note that the figures are not explicitly linked to the body of the text and legends are short on details).Although environmental factors and disease are not on their own responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire, nature was an active player and must be included in the story. Harper has provided a new outline of the fall of Rome for a new age of environmental awareness. As Ian Morris aptly puts it on the book jacket, “Kyle Harper is a Gibbon for the twenty-first century.” Like Gibbon's work that has been built upon and refined over the generations, Harper's work, as he himself acknowledges, will soon need to be updated as new studies become available at an ever-quickening rate. In this book Harper does not engage in the fine points of scholarly debate, but rather is concerned with painting the outlines of a new way to understand the fall of Rome from the second through seventh centuries CE. Some of Harper's points will be challenged, but, importantly, he has shifted the conversation in ways that are sure to last. With the introduction of climate and disease into the narrative, our understanding of the fate of Rome has changed

Ancient history · Art · Climate change · Economic history · Empire · Geography · Period (music · Population · Roman Empire · Sociology · Demography · History · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research · Zoonotic diseases and public health · Geology

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