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Greek Roman columns.Greek Roman columns
Gradually, some of the technological feats of the Romans were rediscovered and/or improved upon and some others – such as firearms, advanced sailing ship technologies and moveable type printing – went ahead of what the Romans had done by the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Era. However the Roman technological feats of many different areas, like civil engineering, construction materials, transport technology, and some inventions such as the mechanical reaper went unmatched until the 19th century. Foreign influence Much of what is described as typically Roman technology, as opposed to that of the Greeks, comes directly from the Etruscan civilization, which was thriving to the North when Rome was just a small kingdom. The Etruscans had perfected the stone arch, and used it in bridges as well as buildings. Etruscan cities had paved streets and sewer systems, unlike most city-states, which had muddy roads and no sewers save filthy open-air trenches. ( Greek Roman columns ) ( Greek Roman columns ) Some of later Roman technology was taken directly from Greek civilization. Many of the implements of land based Roman armies came out of the experimentation and the new developments in weapons of the Hellenistic wars that raged for decades between the successors of Alexander the Great. Torsion artillery made the individual Greek city states newly vulnerable. Nor could city state militias compete against the coordinated arms of the new professional armies. Greek Roman columns The future lay with regional powers. By founding colonies of citizens and alliances with many small city states, Rome became a major multiple city regional power despite having the formal constitution of an individual city state. Rome's success would owe something to being on the periphery of a number of cultures, Etruscan, Greek and perhaps Samnite and Carthaginian.Roman fleets were based directly on Carthaginian quinqueremes but were quickly adapted with the Roman innovation of the corvus Speed of innovation Small scale innovation was common as devices were gradually made more efficient, such as the improvement of the overshot water wheel and the improvements in wagon construction. Technology could and did evolve. The scale of the Empire encouraged the geographical spread of innovations. The ideal Roman citizen was an articulate veteran soldier who could wisely govern a large family household, which was supported by slave labor. Innovators did have some prestige; Pliny, for example, often records their names, or has some story to account for the innovation. Romans also knew enough history to be aware that technological change had occurred in the past and brought benefits. Military innovation was always valued. One text, De Rebus Bellicis, devoted to a number of innovations in military machinery, has survived. Greek Roman columns The apparent period in which technological progress was fastest and greatest was during the 2nd century and 1st century BC, which was the period in which Roman political and economic power greatly increased. Innovation continued until the fall of the Empire, and it would take hundreds of years for all of its technological advancements to be rediscovered by other civilizations. Our understanding of Roman technology is provided by Pliny's Naturalis Historia, the De Architectura of Vitruvius and the De aquaeductu of Frontinus, all reliable works which give good information, and many inventions they mention have been confirmed by modern archaeology. By the beginning of the 1st century, most of what is considered today as typical Roman technology was already invented and refined, such as: concrete, plumbing facilities, cranes, wagon technology, mechanized harvesting machines, domes, the arch in building practice, wine and oil presses, and glass blowing. The energy constraint All technology uses energy to transform a material into a desirable object. The cheaper energy is, the wider the class of technologies that are considered economic. This is why technological history can be seen as a succession of ages defined by energy type i.e. human, animal, water, peat, coal, and oil. The Romans had water power, and exploited wood and coal for heating. There were huge reserves of wood, peat and coal in the Roman Empire, and wood at least was easily transportable to the major urban centres. ( Greek Roman columns ) ( Greek Roman columns ) The Romans worked almost all the coalfields of England that outcropped on the surface, by the end of the 2nd century (Smith 1997; 323). But after c.200 AD the commercial heart of the Empire was in Africa and the East. There was no large coalfield on the edge of the Mediterranean. If there had been, history may have been different. As it was, hypocausts did allow them to exploit fuels like wood. Craft basis Roman technology was largely based on a system of crafts, although the term engineering is used today to describe the technical feats of the Romans. The Greek words used were mechanic or machine-maker or even mathematician which had a much wider meaning than now. There were a large number of engineers employed by the army. The most famous engineer of this period was Apollodorus of Damascus. Normally each trade, each group of artisans—stone masons, glass blowers, surveyors, etc.—within a project had its own practice of masters and apprentices, and many tried to keep their trade secrets, passing them on solely by word of mouth, a system still in use today by those who do not want to patent their inventions. Writers such as Vitruvius, Pliny the Elder and Frontinus published widely on many different technologies, and there was a corpus of manuals on basic mathematics and science such as the many books by Archimedes, Ctesibius, Heron, Euclid and so on. Not all of the manuals which were available to the Romans have survived, as lost works illustrates. Much of what is known of Roman technology comes indirectly from archaeology and from the third-hand accounts of Latin texts copied from Arabic texts, which were in turn copied from the Greek texts of scholars such as Hero of Alexandria or contemporary travelers who had observed Roman technologies in action. Writers like Pliny the Elder and Strabo had enough intellectual curiosity to make note of the inventions they saw during their travels, although their typically brief descriptions often arouse discussion as to their precise meaning. On the other hand, Pliny is perfectly clear when describing gold mining, his text in book xxxiii having been confirmed by archaeology and field-work at such sites as Las Medulas and Dolaucothi.
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