Download “What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?” The Legacy of Roman

“What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?”
The Legacy of Roman Builders
Miriam Raub Vivian
In a memorable scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), John Cleese (as “Reg”)
repeatedly says to a secret gathering of anti-Roman Jews, “What have the Romans ever done for
us?” This is Python humor at its best, but as with much Python humor, it rests on the troupe’s
solid grasp of history and conveys more than just skillful comedy. The scene is funny because the
answer his audience (annoyingly) gives him—counter to expectations—is clearly “a lot”:
aqueducts, roads, irrigation, public baths, public order, and peace, to name a few. Evidence of
this Roman penchant for building, mainly between roughly 300 BCE and 300 CE, dots the
landscape around the Mediterranean and well beyond.
These visible reminders of ancient Rome’s contributions to architecture, engineering,
and construction are, however, not all that the Romans built. Early Romans conceived and
formed the world’s first republic, a representative form of government that inspired America’s
founders, who were drawn to its supposed checks and balances and who recoiled from the
model of Athens’ radical democracy. It was likewise the Romans who built a powerful military
with a flexible organization—and new weaponry—emulated by many later states. In the center
of Italy, the city of Rome conquered a vast empire and built a provincial system to govern it.
Their administration of empire included their particular approach to citizenship, which they
extended to those whose loyalty they needed and which generally made allies of the leaders of
those they conquered. Their trade networks, following sea routes and Roman roads, contributed
to a powerful economy that carried both goods and culture across vast distances, making the
capital city of Rome the greatest emporium of the ancient world, and drawing goods even from
well beyond its borders, such as precious amber from the Baltic region.
As the Romans developed cities and reshaped the landscape of their empire, it is the
physical remains of their building that have perhaps most captured the imagination of those
who study Rome today, as these provide visible evidence for the impressive achievement of
Roman architects and builders, and their innovations; we are certainly heirs of the learning and
skill involved in these monuments to Roman ingenuity. Testimony to the importance of the built
environment for Romans can be found in even the memoir of Rome’s first emperor, The
Achievements of the Divine Augustus, where Augustus (the model for future Roman rulers) boasts,
among his many achievements, of seeing to the construction and repair of numerous buildings in
the capital. These are only a few of those he mentions (in chapters 19-21):
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I built the Senate House…the temple of Apollo [and] of the divine Julius
[Caesar]…the temple of Quirinus, the temples of Minerva and Queen Juno and
Jupiter Libertas on the Aventine…[and] the temple of the Great Mother on the
Palatine. I restored the Capitol and the theatre of Pompey….I restored the
channels of the aqueducts….I completed the Forum Julium and the basilica
between the temples of Castor and Saturn….I restored eighty-two temples….I
restored the Via Flaminia from the city as far as Rimini, together with all bridges
except….I built the temple of Mars the Avenger and Forum Augustum….[and] I
built the theatre adjacent to the temple of Apollo.1
According to the second-century CE Roman biographer Suetonius (“Augustus,” chapter 28),
“Augustus so improved her [Rome’s] appearance that he could justifiably boast: ‘I found Rome
built of bricks; I leave her clothed in marble.’”2
Yet Augustus was just one Roman patron of building. From senators to succeeding
emperors, Roman leaders embraced the expansion of Rome’s infrastructure and showcased
emerging technologies. Over the centuries of Roman dominance in the Mediterranean world,
chief among the building innovations they exploited, refined, or developed to great effect were
the arch, dome, concrete, and, hypocaust. These are best observed in some of the major structures
built by the Romans—examples of which (even if decomposing) exist around their ancient
empire: roads, bridges, aqueducts, sewers, amphitheaters, temples, and baths. The Romans also
built their structures to last, and what is impressive is how many Roman structures remain
reasonably intact after roughly 2,000 years. It is also important to note that these structures
were primarily for public use rather than simply the preserve of elites.
Despite the Romans’ dominance of the Mediterranean world for many centuries, a
central feature of their approach to rule was to incorporate the achievements and useful
practices of older civilizations. This was just as true with tools and building techniques as it was
for gods. For example, one of the most important surveying tools known to Romans was the
groma, which probably originated in the Ancient Near East. The Romans exploited its use to lay
out roads and aqueducts and plan cities in a grid pattern; each planned town had two main
streets intersecting at its center: the cardo and decumanus. The groma was a long rod topped with
two bars crossing at right angles; from the end of each of the four arms, plumb lines were
suspended. To establish a straight line, the agrimensor (“land measurer,” aka a gromaticus) looked
through two plumb lines toward markers in the distance; these were then moved into
alignment. Their surveying tools limited them to constructing roads and streets using mainly
180- and 90-degree angles, and as their main roads were built to convey infantrymen more than
vehicles, they were not bothered by fairly steep grades that could result from an insistence on
straight roads. When they needed to determine how level a surface was, they used a chorobates, a
1 Res Gestae Divi Augusti: The Achievements of the Divine Augustus, ed. P.A. Brunt and J.M. Moore (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1970), 27-29. Augustus governed the Roman state as a monarch in reality (if not in name) from 30BCE until his death in 14
CE.
2
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (London: Penguin, 1957), 69.
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kind of bench (some 20 feet long) with plumb lines suspended from its four corners and a fivefoot channel on top that could be filled with water; when the water met the top of the channel
on both ends, surveyors had achieved true level.
The Romans were rightfully renowned for their road-building, which covered their
entire empire and which, based on one source, consisted of 372 main roads running over 53,000
miles.3 The first, and perhaps most famous, of these major roads was the Via Appia (Appian
Way), constructed on the order of the Censor Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BCE. The road
initially traveled south to Capua in Roman Campania, but eventually extended all the way to the
coast, and long stretches of it can still be walked today. “Milestones” were erected to mark each
Roman mile from the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum. These “miles” were equal to 1,000
paces, known as milia passuum, from which we get our word “mile.” Rome’s military success
depended on these roads, so usually it was army engineers who designed them. Variation in
building these roads was standard, with locally available materials generally determining the
kind of road built. Roman roads could be as narrow as four feet and as wide as 30, with main
ones normally wide enough for two-way traffic. Typically, a deep trench was first dug (at times
more than four feet), and the earth at the bottom compacted. Then layers of sand and gravel
were laid, with pebbles atop these, sometimes bound by clay, sometimes by cement; on top
typically were closely packed cobblestones, kept in place by curbing on both sides of the road.4
These many layers—and crowning the middle of the road—helped ensure drainage of water,
thus also minimizing maintenance. Gutters on each side also helped control water flow, and
paths on each side of the road were often included to serve those traveling by horseback or with
unshod draft animals. More modest city streets often had sidewalks elevated on either side of
the street for foot traffic.
Of course, more than Roman troops used these highways connecting major centers of the
empire. Besides soldiers, these roads carried ideas, goods, and people, the exchange of which
shaped the Roman world, both spreading Roman culture and exposing Romans to a diverse
world beyond their capital; they also helped make Roman culture (and the Greek culture they
incorporated) dominant in the Mediterranean world for centuries. As Romans established
colonies in far-flung peaceful provinces—and military camps in more contentious ones, as well
as near imperial frontiers—they constructed the kinds of buildings they were used to at home.
These amenities brought familiarity to their new home and helped romanize the regions they
settled. This was especially true near Roman military camps (sing. castrum), the existence of
which often generated civilian communities to help supply them—with goods, women, and
sometimes wives. In fact, cities in England that end in “cester” or “chester” or “caster” (from
castrum, e.g., Cirencester, Winchester, Lancaster) bear witness to their origin as military camps.
These roadways also functioned for the Cursus Publicus, the “public course” created by
Augustus, which delivered the mail and conveyed magistrates on official business. For
The source is the Antonine Itinerary. The date is uncertain, but the oldest extant copy is from c. 300 CE.
In Rome, the wide availability of volcanic rock led to its use as pavers or cobblestones; these are still used
in some streets and walkways in Rome today.
3
4
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government purposes there were stations (stationes) roughly about every 30 miles apart along the
highways to provide fresh horses, supplies, and even lodging. As Alexander Purves Gest put it,
“The station-masters, or ‘stationers,’ no doubt kept writing materials on hand for the
accommodation of travelers, and the word ‘stationery’ is still in use to signify such supplies.”5
With the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 CE, even church bishops
were now allowed to make use of these, enhancing their role and status in the empire and
facilitating their work for both church and empire.
Roman surveying equipment was applied as well to more sophisticated projects, such as
amphitheaters, bridges, sewers, triumphal and monumental arches, and aqueducts, but it was
Roman refinement of the arch, already known in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, that
propelled Roman building to great heights and further allowed them to construct freestanding
theaters, for example, where the Greeks had built their theaters into hillsides for support. The
Greeks had also relied heavily on the lintel, a horizontal beam or heavy stone laid across two
vertical supports or posts, such as in a doorway. The force of the lintel on the posts limits both
the weight of the lintel and the span of the opening between the posts or columns. Roman use of
the arch, beginning around the 3rd century BCE, enabled builders to create ever-larger spans
between pillars because with an arch, the thrust of the span pushes from the top of the arch
outward and then down the posts or columns to the ground, thus distributing the weight and
stress of the arch more effectively than in lintel construction. The Romans likely learned arch
construction from their Etruscans neighbors to the north, including the important keystone, a
wedge-shaped stone placed last into the top of the arch to lock it into place and activate
downward thrust. The arch made possible the construction of what was by far the largest
amphitheater in the Roman world, the Colosseum, known as the Flavian Amphitheater, after the
imperial dynasty that commissioned it in the late first century CE.
Arches were generally built over wooden frames. A series of contiguous arches formed a
vault, and a series of intersecting arches in the round, filling 360 degrees, created a dome. Roman
arches also had the advantage of saving on construction materials and were, furthermore,
aesthetically pleasing. Employed in bridges and aqueducts, for example, these large spans
allowed rivers to flow through them with minimal impediment. One portion of the Pons Fabricius
(today the Ponte Fabricio), built in 62 BCE and connecting the Campus Martius on the east side
of the Tiber River to Tiber Island in the middle of the river, is still in use today. Perhaps more
impressive is the survival of the Roman bridge in Vaison-la-Romaine in France. When severe
flooding killed scores in this community in Provence in 1992, it also swept away the modern
bridge. The ancient Roman bridge, however, held fast and is now the bridge inhabitants rely on
today.
5Engineering,
in Our Debt to Greece and Rome series (NY: Cooper Square Publishers, 1963), 139. In another
fascinating legacy of the Romans and their roads, it seems likely that the distance between wheels on Roman
wagons, determined by apparently standardized axle lengths, was transmitted to the medieval European world
because of the ruts that formed from wheeled traffic on Roman roads, which these populations continued to used.
To avoid difficulties for medieval Europeans traveling these rutted roads, the standard Roman axle size was
maintained, and that standard appears to have governed the distance established for modern railroad tracks, whose
wheels would thus amazingly also fit into the ruts of ancient Roman roads.
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Whereas Roman bridges carried travelers, aqueducts carried water, hence the name (Lt.
aquaeductus), which combines “water” with “to conduct” or “to lead.” These marvels of
construction brought water to cities from mountain sources as far as 40 to 60 miles away.
Although the Romans did not invent water channels, they brought them to new heights. The
first of these Roman aqueducts, the Aqua Appia, was commissioned to serve Rome in 312 BCE by
the very same Roman censor responsible for the Via Appia—Appius Claudius Caecus—and by
the height of Rome’s empire, there were 11 different aqueducts supplying the capital alone.6 It is
the beautiful repeating arches of these aqueducts that most catch our attention, but most of
these water channels were built underground. The aqueducts were built on the simple principle
that water seeks it lowest level, and the Romans thus used gravity to carry water over vast
distances. When mountains stood in the way, the Romans bored through them; when the water
channel met valleys or rivers, the Romans maintained the proper height and gradient of the
channel by building bridges, with their series of arches, to carry the water across. Most famous
today among Rome’s many surviving aqueducts are those at Nîmes in Provence in France (1st
century CE)—the Pont du Gard—which rises 165 feet high; the Aqua Claudia (mid-1st century
CE), several miles of which are visible as they approach Rome; and the Aqueduct of Segovia in
Spain, which was built in the early 2nd century CE and used well into the 20th.. Amazingly, this
last aqueduct used no mortar at all, instead relying solely on cut-granite blocks fitted tightly
together.
These covered conduits of Roman aqueducts were usually built of stone and lined with
waterproof cement; the build-up of minerals in the channels required regular attention by
Roman magistrates to maintain a strong flow of water. The aqueducts were usually routed to
the highest point in a city, where water flowed into tanks and from there was distributed, often
through lead or ceramic pipes, to fountains (for both drinking and decoration), public baths, and
luxury homes. Several of the major aqueducts that served Rome’s capital are still functioning,
including the Aqua Virgo, built in 19 BCE, which today supplies water to the famous Trevi
Fountain. At its height, this single aqueduct could deliver over over 3 ½ million cubic feet of
water every 24 hours.7
Not only did the aqueduct system make drinking water and bath complexes possible,
but because these channels produced a constant flow of water, there was unused water and runoff to manage. One use for this was in Roman sanitation systems. Water flowing through baths
and fountains could then be channeled into sewers and latrines. Private single-seater and public
multi-seater toilets existed, with remnants of these visible today. One of the larger latrines was
built in the early first century in Rome’s Largo Argentina; it could seat 47 toilet-users at the
“At the end of the Empire, Roman aqueducts brought 1,747,000 cubic meters of water [over 61 million cubic feet]
into the city every day. With a population just shy of one million, that amounted to 461.5 gallons per person. Every
day.” From “Summer,” in Four Seasons in Rome, by Anthony Doerr (NY: Scribner, 2008), 173.
6
7
Amanda Claridge, Rome: An Archaeological Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 198.
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same time.8 Enclosed benches—sometimes set against three walls of a large room—had large
keyhole-shaped openings on top, where users sat to evacuate their waste. Water flowed
continuously under these benches, carrying away human waste in an effort to keep Rome’s cities
clean.
The arches and vaults used in the aqueducts also held the key to Rome’s perfection of the
dome, a structure capable of creating vast, open interior spaces, unencumbered by the rows of
columns required to hold up traditional roofs. Essential to constructing domes, however, was
the development of Roman concrete (opus caementicium). In use among the Romans by about the
middle of the 2nd century BCE, concrete used “aggregate,” including everything from broken
pottery, rock, and brick to crushed ceramic roof tiles. The basis of this was limestone, which
was burned to create quicklime, a very lightweight rock. To this was added water, which
produced steam, as the quicklime heated up and produced calcium hydroxide. This resulted in a
paste, to which sand and other aggregate was added.9 By the first century CE, the Romans were
creating stronger concrete with the addition of pozzolana, a reddish volcanic earth. Along with
crushed pottery, adding pozzolana improved concrete’s ability to resist water, enabling Romans
to use it to build underwater piers in bridges, aqueducts, and harbors. As concrete can be
poured into forms, thus creating many different structures, Roman builders used it extensively,
often simply covering a concrete structure with bricks and mortar or marble facing.
Perhaps nowhere is the Roman achievement in engineering—and the perfection of the
dome—more evident than in the temple to all the gods, the Pantheon, which Hadrian built in
the early 2nd century. The interior space, a near sphere, has a diameter of 145 feet; the floor to the
ceiling spans this same distance. The vast dome incorporates a nearly 29-foot oculus, an “eye”
open to the heavens that allows in sunlight.10 Perhaps more striking is that the dome of the
Pantheon was the largest concrete dome in the world until a larger one was built in Paris in
1958.11 To support the dome, the walls of the Pantheon were made nearly 20 feet thick. The load
of the ceiling, however, was lightened by a recurring pattern of recesses (coffers) ringed around
the opening in a series of five bands—an innovation that further adds to the attractiveness of the
building.
Roman construction of domes was likely refined through experimentation with bath
complexes, which were also made possible by the vast amounts of water channeled into major
Roman cities through aqueducts. It was in the baths that the Romans developed what was a
major innovation in engineering: the hypocaust, or subterranean heating system. By c. 100 BCE,
they had greatly advanced upon Greek heating methods, creating a kind of central heating that
could warm floors and even walls of connected rooms. In one common method, a fire stoked at
Olga Koloski-Ostrow, The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 13.
8 Ann
addition of only very small stones resulted in caementa, “cement.”
also allows in rainwater, which sometimes affects access to some or all of the building.
11Claridge, 201.
9The
10It
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the outer edge and beneath a room pushed hot gases underneath the room’s flooring, which was
raised up on pilae, that is, columns of terracotta tiles that retained heat and thereby warmed the
floor. The floor itself would be constructed with terracotta tiles laid atop the pilae, and then the
floor tiles were covered with a layer of cement. To draw heat up into the walls, builders placed
open box tiles (tubuli) inside the walls, which allowed the hot air to flow through them and up
to flues at the top of the walls, where they could exit the building. A water heater fixed above
the fire functioned to heat the water that flowed through the baths; thus the hottest rooms, and
those with the warmest bath water, were nearest the fuel room.
Although there is no bath complex from antiquity still functioning, ruins of these
marvels lie around what was once Rome’s Mediterranean empire, giving scholars insight into
how they functioned.12 These could range from small, private baths, termed balnea (though there
are few surviving examples), to massive public bath complexes (thermae) serving hundreds of
patrons at a time, and replete with exercise yards, libraries, music halls, gardens, and even
lecture halls. The Baths of Caracalla (early 3rd century CE) and the Baths of Diocletian (early 4th
century CE), were both built in Rome as major public building projects, with each occupying
several dozen acres; their massive height and enormous rooms were meant to impress the
populace, for whom they were built. The Baths of Caracalla, for example, rose upwards of 130
feet, dwarfing their human visitors. Bath complexes regularly included a changing room
(apodyterium); a room with a cold pool or plunge (frigidarium)—this was Olympic sized in the
Baths of Caracalla—a warm room (tepidarium), sometimes with a warm pool; and a hot room
(caldarium), usually with a hot pool and sometimes with a basin of water to create steam. As
steam filled the room and rose, ridges worked into the vaulted ceiling helped draw water down
these channels instead of raining down on the heads of bathers.
Whereas it was not the Romans who invented most of the major building techniques
they employed, it was they who vastly improved upon them, exploiting their developing
expertise as builders to create an impressive infrastructure in the cities of their empire. Through
surveying tools such as the groma and chorobates, structures such as the arch, vault, and dome,
and major innovations such as concrete and the hypocaust, Roman engineers and builders left an
enormous legacy to future generations. Building cities and their structures is demanding enough,
but maintenance entails a further challenge, and there appears to be a lesson for us in the many
enduring structures left by the Romans. It is to their credit that so many of their buildings stand
today, monuments to their ingenuity, planning, and devotion to durability. So impressive is
Rome’s achievement in building that even a very basic knowledge of it should enable us to join
Reg’s fictional anti-Roman audience in saying that, indeed, the Romans did an awful lot for us.
12Well-known
examples include Bath, England; several in Pompeii; and many in Rome itself. Yet evidence
of bath complexes exists even in much smaller communities, such as the ancient Roman border town of Carnuntum
(modern Petronell-Carnuntum in Austria), south of the Danube River, which appears to have had three.
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Selected Sources for Further Investigation
Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Engineering an Empire. Directed by Christopher Cassel. A & E Television Networks: The History
Channel, 2005. DVD.
Malacrino, Carmelo. Constructing the Ancient World. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2010.
Oleson, John Peter. Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Roman Bath. Written, produced, and directed by Nancy Linde. WGBH Educational Foundation:
NOVA, 2000. DVD.
Rook, Tony. Roman Building Techniques. Stroud, UK: Amberley Publishing, 2013.
White, K.D. Greek and Roman Technology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
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