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

Explanations of Rome’s decline and fall underestimate a key factor according to this ingenious, persuasive account from Harper (From Shame to Sin), professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma. Human action played its role, but Rome’s fate “was equally decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes and solar cycles.” Historians generally agree that Rome flourished from about 100 B.C.E to 150 C.E., which interval Harper reveals coincided with the Roman climate optimum—a period of warm, wet, and stable weather around the Mediterranean. Climate stability then deteriorated until, after 450 C.E., the area entered the chilly Late Antique Little Ice Age, which wreaked havoc on food production. Famines, which had been rare, began appearing. Romans were dreadfully unhealthy, with a life expectancy under 30. Adults were shorter than their Iron Age ancestors and medieval descendants. The legendary Roman sewers functioned mostly for storm drainage, and living so close to effluvia made diarrheal diseases the leading killer, rivaled by malaria and such epidemic catastrophes as smallpox and bubonic plague. Harper enlists modern techniques, including DNA sequencing, astrophysics, ice core analysis, forensic pathology, volcanology, epidemiology, and economic analysis to his case. This fine history of Rome is lucidly argued and its perspective no longer controversial. Maps & illus. (Nov.)