The Fate of Rome

Author Kyle Harper
Publisher Princeton University Press
Place of publication Princeton
Year 2017
Number of pages 440

Books

The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of An Empire

30/06/2020

The book titled The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of An Empire offers a new view of the decline of the fall of Rome. Straying from the biographical, economic, ethical and social interpretations made to date, the author believes that the termination of Roman civilization was in large measure caused by the combination of two problems: climate change and epidemics. Familiar? Climate change led to a ‘Little Ice Age’ that ruined farming, and the epidemics that recurringly decimated the imperial cities for 200 years proved an unsustainable burden, despite the Roman world’s renown for hygiene infrastructures; a reputation which Kyle Harper contests with good arguments.