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Fates of Romes

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KYLEHARPER, THE FATE OF ROME: CLIMATE, DISEASE, AND THE END OF AN EMPIRE. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 417, illus. isbn9780691166834. £27.95/US$35.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2020

Alain Bresson
Alain Bresson*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
*
abresson@uchicago.edu
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Extract

Kyle Harper's book The Fate of Rome marks the thunderous entry of Nature into the world of ancient history of the twenty-first century. This is not the first book devoted to questions of climate and diseases in the ancient world, but its publication nonetheless represents a turning point. From now on, whether they work on political, social, economic, or even religious history, ancient historians will no longer be able to ignore these factors in their own writings. That is not to say that all the theses of the book, especially its natural determinism, should be accepted uncritically.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 110 , November 2020 , pp. 233 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

I wish to extend my thanks to Peter Thonemann for his invaluable help in the preparation of this paper, as well as to Marcel Keller, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their helpful suggestions.

References

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