The Fate of Rome summary

Around the world, populations vary greatly in their average height. Why is that so? Well, one major contributing factor is nutrition. 

The modern era has seen several nations undergo massive growth spurts thanks to economic development and the resulting nutritional boost. Just take the Dutch, whose men stood at an average of 164-5 centimeters in 1850. Today, they’re almost 20 centimeters taller on average.

There is perhaps no environment that mosquitos love more than the swamp, a large body of standing water filled with tall grasses. And it just so happens that Rome, the city at the center of the vast Roman Empire, was built upon this kind of wetland.

Not only was Rome surrounded by swamp, but the city itself was full of waterworks like decorative fountains, pools, and urban gardens – ample breeding ground for mosquitoes. 

The City of Rome, AD 248. At first glance, the city looks much the same as it did a generation ago, at the height of its glory. But upon closer inspection, things seem less opulent, less prosperous, and generally less stable than before.

For starters, the coins circulating within the city, once solid silver, are little more than metal wafers with a thin wash of silver to coat them. Stone fortifications now surround the city, protecting against outside forces. An obscure cult known as Christianity is just showing signs of gaining footing. 

In the late third and fourth centuries, the Roman Empire was still the most powerful empire in the world. 

A series of reforms occurred throughout this period. They included those of the emperor Diocletian, who established the tetrarchy, giving four separate rulers the power to manage the sprawling empire. The army was rebuilt, and currency stabilized too, allowing markets to regenerate.

In the fifth and sixth centuries, the Roman Empire’s eastern capital of Constantinople was a global hub – a trade center and major city in which you could hear ten or more languages being spoken on the streets at any given time. And sharing this diverse city with its human inhabitants was a species known as Rattus rattus: the black rat.

These rats weren’t just annoying pests – they were hosts for a vicious killer we now know as the Black Death, or bubonic plague. 

The Black Death wasn’t the only deadly and seemingly apocalyptic event gripping the faltering Roman Empire during the fifth and sixth centuries. In AD 535, a volcano exploded, belching out clouds of ash and smoke. Its eruption caused what came to be known as the year without summer. Witnesses claimed the sun rarely shone, and that when it did, its light was dim and murky.

That was just one instance in a larger chain of climate anomalies. AD 540 to 541 saw another volcanic winter. And the AD 530s and 540s were the coldest decades of the epoch. In AD 536, summer temperatures in Europe dropped by an entire 2.5 degrees Celsius – an astonishing figure.