• Justinian's Flea

  • Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe
  • By: William Rosen
  • Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
  • Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (431 ratings)

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Justinian's Flea  By  cover art

Justinian's Flea

By: William Rosen
Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
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Publisher's summary

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. 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. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed 5,000 people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself.

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. 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.

©2007 William Rosen (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

What listeners say about Justinian's Flea

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

The First Pandemic

This is the story of the eastern Roman empire, how Justinian tried to reunite the empire, and how the plague ended this campaign. Heavy on history including speculation about the origin of the bubonic plague. My greatest learning was how close in time the Justinian plague was to the birth of Islam

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Great story horrible narrator

Story is interesting but the narrator is so monotonous it is nearly unbearable. Still worth a listen.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
  • JB
  • 11-14-19

Please re-title this book

Amazing amazing job on the eastern Roman empire, history, wars, intrigue, and finally… The plague. Only about 15% of this book is about the plague, so if you are looking for a book on the plague… Do not buy this book. However, if you are interested in early Christendom, early European formation, palace intrigue, and in general every day life of those who lived in the 6th century, This is the book for you. This book should not be named Justinian’s flea, but should be named something that reflects the true story line.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

you will need a cast of characters

Reader was monotone, made listening to the minutiae difficult. Great premise, I learned a lot, but not for the novice.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Dense

The book reminded me of Barzan's "From Dawn to Decadence ". It requires the listener to be fairly conversant with a considerable amount of diverse history. This is not a casual listen, and in fact should probably be read instead. That being said , I found the story interesting and the conclusions to be provocative.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

The title is borderline clickbait

I bought this audiobook thinking I'd be getting an interesting look into how a plague contributed to the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire. What I got was a meandering 12 hour waste of time. The first 6 hours just summarize the political history of Rome with no mention of earlier epidemics and how they affected the empire (as well as an entire chapter talking about the construction of the Hagia Sophia). Once the author actually gets to the bacteria, he doesn't really talk about the epidemic so much as he just rambles about how epic and dangerous germs are. It's another hour before the Pandemic section and despite what that section's title says, it's just more political history of Rome and the Sassanid Empire. Don't buy this book if you want to learn about the plague that hit Rome during Justinian's reign. You're just gonna wind up fast-forwarding through chapters and chapters of the author rambling about politics.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

well done...

I'm at a loss to understand why some find that the narrator didn't do justice to the book... When i first read some of the negative reviews about this narrator i listened to the sample and wasn't quite sure about him...But after finishing the book i have no hesitation in my judgement : 5 stars...

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A portrait of Justinian's empire

Rosen goes to extreme lengths to prove that the plague has dramatic impact on the fall of Rome and the subsequent rise of European nation states. I enjoyed the read; however, in classic Rosen fashion, his overall thesis and argument is lost throughout his tangents.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Good Story, Bad Narration

Would you try another book from William Rosen and/or Barrett Whitener?

The story itself is great and Rosen seems to have written a very complete narrative about the reign of Justinian and the effects of the plague on Rome. Whitener is so absolutely boring and monotone that he makes listening to a good story difficult to say the least.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Barrett Whitener?

Anyone else

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

If you want to know...

If you could sum up Justinian's Flea in three words, what would they be?

Linear Historical Briefing

What other book might you compare Justinian's Flea to and why?

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Outline of History - The Fabric of the Cosmos,because it provides a living, breathing story of Goths, Huns, Romans in a linear story with the precision of a Physicist peeling the mystery of the Universe - from string to that other unseen, a Multiverse.

What about Barrett Whitener’s performance did you like?

He knew the story, spoke the language, gave the feel of excitement of a scale of battle we rarely if ever have known, intrigue, and human suffering living in bacterium in the gut of a flea riding the rat from Egypt to every boat, barn and castle across the Roman Empire.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No... maybe respect. Lots of respect and a well done with the weaving of a great unseeable disaster into a story that should teach us what to expect - when we least expect - and to wake up to what we are; as Richard Dawkins wrote, 'self replicating molecules that accumulated survival machines and were emancipated by language... and now we realize we are vulnerable to other self replicating machines... Asimov said it best; We are matter contemplating itself.

Any additional comments?

Good story, well told, worth the time to listen and learn from that parallel universe we call The Roman Empire; they were us in another time.

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