INVENTIONS OF ANCIENT ROME

How the Romans changed the world you live in.

Perhaps the greatest of all the ancient civilisations, the Roman Empire represented the age of classical antiquity and helped create the world we live in today. The massive engineering projects that were undertaken and the advances in medicine and society ensure Roman influence can still be felt now. For example, concrete and cement were first popularised in Ancient Rome, as was a type of central heating known as a hypocaust.

One of the most remarkable traits of all though, was the ability for the Romans to work all their schemes and inventions into fully functioning cities within an extensive empire. Rome itself was a bustling metropolis that no other civilisation matched in prosperity and size for centuries afterward. Nowhere else in the ancient world had grand shopping centres like Trajan’s Market, specialised landfill sites such as Monte Testaccio or extensive sewer networks like the Cloaca Maxima. They were also famously proficient at town planning and building large structures.

Home life was revolutionised under the Romans. Also, as is well known, the army was an all-conquering juggernaut that took the old world by storm. To commemorate their affect on modern society and technology, we discover just how innovative and ground-breaking this civilisation really was.

Engineering in Roman home life

The technology inside a Roman house.

The citizens of Rome had to be properly housed to ensure that the vast urban sprawl could operate as an organised society. Prior to the Romans, impressive structures were built by the Egyptians and the Greeks but never on the scale of the Roman Empire with its extensive housing projects.

Roman building techniques owed a lot to Greek and Etruscan influences. Houses were one or two storeys high and included lots of different sections. Ideally adapted to the Mediterranean heat, the typical Roman house often had no windows (glass was rarely used), instead fitted with an atrium to act as an open-air courtyard in the middle of the building. Life in a house was boosted by a fully functioning public welfare system that provided grain to 300,000 of Rome’s families every year. If you wanted some retail therapy, Trajan’s Market had over one hundred tabernae (shops) selling a variety of goods.

Not every citizen was lucky or rich enough to own a house. Lower classes were put into one of Rome’s many ‘insulae’ apartment buildings and there are believed to have been over 40,000 of these in the city. In fact, these apartments outnumbered family houses by 20 to one!

Roman roads

Roman roads interlinked cities and towns and allowed rapid military and administrative communications. Construction began with a trench, which was filled with a base of stones and rocks. These were packed together tightly, usually with cement, to create a firm foundation for armies to march on and chariots to ride across. Large paving stones were used on the surface. These were placed and fitted by hand along with channels on the side of the road that allowed water to run off into surrounding fields. In the UK, roads such as the A1 and A5 owe their origins to the Roman conquest of Britain.

Aqueduct engineering

How the Romans built their immense water-management network.

Aqueducts weren’t invented by Romans but were popularised by them. These structures were the life stream of a city. 1,300 drinking fountains and 144 public toilets were located in Rome and they were all fed by the complex system of aqueducts, which brought in fresh drinking water from rural areas. The system was accompanied by an elaborate network of sewers.

Rome’s main sewer was known as Cloaca Maxima and carried dirty water out of the city and into the River Tiber. The first-ever aqueduct was the Aqua Appia, built in 312 BCE. It helped relieve the demand for water in a rapidly growing Rome. Where possible, the majority of an aqueduct was built underground to protect it from enemies. The iconic raised arches were only required when the structures neared a city or needed to cross a ravine.

The basic yet effective tools used in construction were the dioptra (measured angles) and chorobates (measured horizontal planes).

These were handled by skilled army engineers who designed a gravity based system with dropshafts and chutes to help the water flow. This demonstrated excellent structural engineering and water management expertise and they were built so well that some are still operational to this day!

Flowing far

Many claim that aqueducts were one of the best Roman developments. Frequent throughout the Roman world, their effective and modern system was lost after the fall of the empire and never recovered until much, much later in human history.

A lot of these structures were actually underground, but they are most fondly remembered for their overground segments with their iconic vaulted arches that were essential in their construction. As techniques improved, aqueducts were also used to supply out-of-town factories and mines with water. The longest aqueduct in Rome was the Aqua Marcia at 91 kilometres (57 miles) from source to city, but even longer systems were built across the empire.

1 Building materials

Aqueducts were primarily constructed out of limestone that was mined from neighbouring quarries. These slabs of rock were bound together by Roman concrete and cement, which was made out of durable and waterproof volcanic sand called pozzolana.

2 Planning

The building of aqueducts was often financed by the emperors themselves, so meticulous planning was put into the operation. The land needed to be surveyed by engineers to make sure it was fit for construction.

3 Construction techniques

The reinforced Roman concrete arch was an essential part of the aqueduct as it could hold the pressure and weight of the water after the wooden construction supports had been removed. Pulleys, wedges and screws were used as lifting apparatus.

4 Design and uses

The water was carried a greatdistance from spring to urban area and was then held in cisterns in the city and onto a network of pipes to each individual building. Aqueducts also aided a town’s sewer system and protected against fires.

Buildings

The biggest cities were home to the biggest buildings.

In its prime Rome was one of the, if not the most, technologically advanced cities in the world. Containing huge, expansive buildings, revolutionary architecture and a housed, fed and watered population within its walls, the vast empire’s capital in Rome was well ahead of its time.

The Colosseum became the cultural centre of Rome after its construction in 80 CE, but the capital also contained one of the largest sports stadiums of all time, the Circus Maximus, as well as other examples of stunning engineering, such as the Pantheon, the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Theatre of Pompey.

Military

Ingenious conquerors.

On both land and sea, the Roman Empire dominated warfare for centuries, invading large portions of Europe and making significant inroads into Africa and Asia Minor. The Romans outwitted their opponents using expert battle tactics and perfectly engineered weapons and armour. Soldiers were divided into legions that served different territories and swore an oath of loyalty to the centurions.

One of the main reasons why the Romans consistently beat their enemies (and what links them to today’s military) is the fact that the army was a professional conscripted force. A full-time operation, a soldier was one of the highest-paid and most-respected occupations in the empire.

The war at sea

On the high seas of the Mediterranean, the Romans enjoyed even more dominance than on land. Using triremes and galleys propelled by teams of over 100 men, ships attacked either by ramming the opposition or boarding their ships. Owing a lot of their strategies to reverse-engineering methods learnt from the Greeks and Carthaginians, maritime superiority was essential for victory in the Punic Wars and Egypt campaigns. The senior arm of the Roman navy was known as the Classis Misenensis and except for internal civil wars, achieved total marine dominance for Rome after the Punic Wars.

Roman newspapers

All citizens in Rome were kept up-to-date with two daily newspapers. The Acta Senatus made sure the public was up to speed with what was going on in the Senate while the Acta Diurna was a daily gazette based on Roman news and weather. Both publications were handwritten so their circulation wasn’t exceedingly high, but the Acta Diurna lasted two centuries of service. The Senatus wasn’t so lucky as several emperors forbade its publication and preferred to keep Senate minutes private. They were also pioneers of the postal service. The Cursus Publicus was a state-run courier system that delivered messages throughout the Roman Empire.

In "How it Works - Book of Incredible History", Imaging Publishing, UK, 2015, excerpt pp. 10-15. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.