ANCIENT ROMAN INFRASTRUCTURE: BRIDGES, TUNNELS, PORTS

ANCIENT ROMAN INFRASTRUCTURE

model of an ancient water mill

The Roman Empire had incredible infrastructure with roads that interconnected cities, well-built bridges, aqueducts and even functioning sewage systems in some places. The Romans built deep water ports, arsenals, barracks, libraries, public buildings and forts. Roman engineering advances include water mills, windmills, rotary mills, water-carrying aqueducts, sewer systems and cement that hardened under water. The dome and the arch were improved and large baths, theaters and apartment houses were built. Roman roads (some of which still exist) stretched for 53,000 miles and passed through tunnels as long as 3.5 miles. Dams were built to irrigate farm land. [Source: World Almanac]

The Senate ordered public works and called in magistrates to administer their construction. Strabo wrote: "The Romans take great care of three things above any other, which the Greeks neglected. That is: opening roads, building aqueducts, and sending the residue underground into sewers."

Gordon Gora wrote in Listverse: “The early Romans went to great lengths to build the perfect city. They were forced to level hills, fill in water-logged sites, even divert the original waterways of the city as constructions spread ever further outward. They knew that to build the city and allow for future growth, they would need to change the natural landscape to fit their needs. The sophistication and engineering talent needed to pull of such efforts remains impressive today.” [Source: Gordon Gora, Listverse. September 16, 2016]

Rome in many ways was more advanced than Europe in the Middle Ages. Among the things the ancient Romans had that medieval Europeans didn't were plumbing, sewers and trash collection. Even so, many towns, including Pompeii, did not have sewers. Cambridge Classics Professor Mary Beard wrote that in the ditches that served as sewers in many places one could probably find “a smelly mixture of animal dung . . . rotting vegetables and human excrement — which was, just to complete the picture, no doubt covered in flies."

Websites on Ancient Rome: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com

Public Improvements Under Augustus

Augustus also ushered in a period of civic improvement. He created fire departments, police departments and established a civil service, staffed by members of the political class, capable of running the Roman empire. Roads, bridges, aqueducts, protective walls and temples were built all over the empire. After his death in A.D. 14, he left behind a report to the Roman people called Res Gestae ("What Was Accomplished") that proclaimed, "I was born in a city of brick and left a city of marble."

Augustus

Suetonius wrote: “He built many public works, in particular the following: his forum with the temple of Mars the Avenger [24 B.C.], the temple of Apollo on the Palatine [28 B.C.], and the fane of Jupiter the Thunderer on the Capitol [22 B.C.]. His reason for building the forum was the increase in the number of the people and of cases at law, which seemed to call for a third forum, since two were no longer adequate. Therefore it was opened to the public with some haste, before the temple of Mars was finished, and it was provided that the public prosecutions be held there apart from the rest, as well as the selection of jurors by lot. He had made a vow to build the temple of Mars in the war of Philippi, which he undertook to avenge his father; accordingly he decreed that in it the Senate should consider wars and claims for triumphs, from it those who were on their way to the provinces with military commands should be escorted, and to it victors on their return should bear the tokens of their triumphs. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum — Divus Augustus” (“The Lives of the Caesars — The Deified Augustus”), written A.D. c. 110, “Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum,” 2 Vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920), pp. 123-287]

“He reared the temple of Apollo in that part of his house on the Palatine for which the soothsayers declared that the god had shown his desire by striking it with lightning. He joined to it colonnades with Latin and Greek libraries, and when he was getting to be an old man he often held meetings of the Senate there as well, and revised the lists of jurors. He dedicated the shrine to Jupiter the Thunderer because of a narrow escape; for on his Cantabrian expedition during a march by night, a flash of lightning grazed his litter and struck the slave dead who was carrying a torch before him. He constructed some works too in the name of others, his grandsons and nephew to wit, his wife and his sister, such as the colonnade and basilica of Gaius and Lucius [12 B.C.], also the colonnades of Livia and Octavia [33 & 15 B.C.], and the theatre of Marcellus [13 B.C.]. More than that, he often urged other prominent men to adorn the city with new monuments or to restore and embellish old ones, each according to his means. And many such works were built at that time by many men; for example, the temple of Hercules and the Muses by Marcius Philippus, the temple of Diana by Lucius Cornificius, the Hall of Liberty by Asinius Pollio, the temple of Saturn by Munatius Plancus, a theatre by Cornelius Balbus, an amphitheatre by Statilius Taurus, and by Marcus Agrippa in particular many magnificent structures. “He divided the area of the city into regions and wards, arranging that the former should be under the charge of magistrates selected each year by lot, and the latter under magistri elected by the inhabitants of the respective neighbourhoods. To guard against fires he devised a system of stations of night watchmen, and to control the floods he widened and cleared out the channel of the Tiber, which had for some time been filled with rubbish and narrowed by jutting buildings. Further, to make the approach to the city easier from every direction, he personally undertook to rebuild the Flaminian Road all the way to Ariminum, and assigned the rest of the high-ways to others who had been honoured with triumphs, asking them to use their prize-money in paving them. He restored sacred edifices which had gone to ruin through lapse of time or had been destroyed by fire, and adorned both these and the other temples with most lavish gifts, depositing in the shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus as a single offering sixteen thousand pounds of gold, besides pearls and other precious stones to the value of fifty million sesterces.

Claudius's Public Works

Claudius followed the example of Augustus in the execution of works of public utility. He constructed the Claudian aqueduct, which brought water to the city from a distance of forty-five miles. For the purpose of giving Rome a good harbor where the grain supplies from Egypt might be landed, he built the Portus Romanus at the mouth of the Tiber near Ostia. To improve the agriculture of the Marsians, he constructed a great tunnel to drain the Fucine Lake, a work which required the labor of thirty thousand men for eleven years. He celebrated the completion of this work by a mimic naval battle on the waters of the lake. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

Claudian aqueduct

Suetonius wrote: “The public works which he completed were great and essential rather than numerous; they were in particular the following: an aqueduct begun by Gaius; also the outlet of Lake Fucinus and the harbor at Ostia, although in the case of the last two he knew that Augustus had refused the former to the Marsyans in spite of their frequent requests, and that the latter had often been thought of by the Deified Julius, but given up because of its difficulty. He brought to the city on stone arches the cool and abundant founts of the Claudian aqueduct, one of which is called Caeruleus and the other Curtius and Albudignus, and at the same time the spring of the new Anio, distributing them into many beautifully ornamented pools. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.) : “De Vita Caesarum:Claudius” (“The Lives of the Caesars: Claudius”), written in A.D. 110, 2 Vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 405-497, modernized by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton]

“He made the attempt on the Fucine Lake as much in the hope of gain as of glory, inasmuch as there were some who agreed to drain it at their own cost, provided the land that was uncovered be given to them. He finished the outlet, which was three miles in length, partly by leveling and partly by tunneling a mountain, a work of great difficulty and requiring eleven years, although he had thirty thousand men at work all the time without interruption. He constructed the harbor at Ostia by building curving breakwaters on the right and left, while before the entrance he placed a mole in deep water. To give this mole a firmer foundation, he first sank the ship in which the great obelisk had been brought from Egypt [This had been brought by Caligula from Heliopolis and set up in the spina of his circus, near the Vatican Hill. It now stands before St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The great ship in which it was transported to Rome from Alexandria is described by Pliny, Nat. Hist. 16.201], and then securing it by piles, built upon it a very lofty tower after the model of the Pharos at Alexandria, to be lighted at night and guide the course of ships.

Hadrian, the Master Builder

Tom Dyckoff wrote in The Times: “And then there were his monuments: the Pantheon, that Temple of the Divine Trajan, the vast Temple of Venus and Roma, the only building for certain designed by Hadrian, his country estate at Tivoli and, to cap it all, his mausoleum – its ruins now assimilated into Rome’s Castel Sant’ Angelo. His wall in northern England was no exception, either. In the provinces, Hadrian bolstered defences, improved cities and built temples, along the way revolutionising the construction industry and securing jobs and prosperity for the plebs. Hail Hadrian, patron saint of hod-carriers. [Source: Tom Dyckoff, the Times, July 2008 ==]

part of Hardrian's Villa at Tivoli

“Hadrian’s architectural passions were the high point of the “Roman Architectural Revolution”, 200 years during which a genuinely Roman language of architecture emerged after several centuries of slavish copying of the Ancient Greek originals. At first the use of such novel materials as concrete and a newly rigid lime mortar was driven by the empire’s expansion, and the consequent demand for new large, practical structures – warehouses, record offices, proto-shopping arcades – easily and quickly put up by unskilled labour. But these new building types and materials also provoked experimentation – new shapes, such as the barrel vault and the arch – acquired from Rome’s expansion to the Middle East. ==

“Hadrian was, in architectural matters, both conservative and audacious. He was infamously respectful of Ancient Greece – comically so to some: he wore a Greek-style beard, and was nicknamed Graeculus. Many of the structures he put up, not least his own Temple of Venus and Roma, were faithful to the past. Yet the ruins of his estate at Tivoli, with its technical feats, its pumpkin domes, its space, curves and colour reveal a theme park of experimental structures that are still inspirational.” ==

Aelius Spartianus wrote: “In almost every city he built some building and gave public games. At Athens he exhibited in the stadium a hunt of a thousand wild beasts, but he never called away from Rome a single wild-beast-hunter or actor. In Rome, in addition to popular entertainments of unbounded extravagance, he gave spices to the people in honour of his mother-in-law, and in honour of Trajan he caused essences of balsam and saffron to be poured over the seats of the theatre. And in the theatre he presented plays of all kinds in the ancient manner and had the court-players appear before the public. In the Circus he had many wild beasts killed and often a whole hundred of lions. He often gave the people exhibitions of military Pyrrhic dances, and he frequently attended gladiatorial shows. He built public buildings in all places and without number, but he inscribed his own name on none of them except the temple of his father Trajan. [Source: Aelius Spartianus: Life of Hadrian,” (r. 117-138 CE.),William Stearns Davis, ed., “Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources,” 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West]

“At Rome he restored the Pantheon, the Voting-enclosure, the Basilica of Neptune, very many temples, the Forum of Augustus, the Baths of Agrippa, and dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders. Also he constructed the bridge named after himself, a tomb on the bank of the Tiber, and the temple of the Bona Dea. With the aid of the architect Decrianus he raised the Colossus and, keeping it in an upright position, moved it away from the place in which the Temple of Rome is now, though its weight was so vast that he had to furnish for the work as many as twenty-four elephants. This statue he then consecrated to the Sun, after removing the features of Nero, to whom it had previously been dedicated, and he also planned, with the assistance of the architect Apollodorus, to make a similar one for the Moon.

“Most democratic in his conversations, even with the very humble, he denounced all who, in the belief that they were thereby maintaining the imperial dignity, begrudged him the pleasure of such friendliness. In the Museum at Alexandria he propounded many questions to the teachers and answered himself what he had propounded. Marius Maximus says that he was naturally cruel and performed so many kindnesses only because he feared that he might meet the fate which had befallen Domitian.

“Though he cared nothing for inscriptions on his public works, he gave the name of Hadrianopolis to many cities, as, for example, even to Carthage and a section of Athens; and he also gave his name to aqueducts without number. He was the first to appoint a pleader for the privy-purse.

Roman Frontiers, Fortifications and Walls

Hadrian border stone in Bulgaria

Rome depended on a network of forts, walls and natural barriers to separate the empire from outsiders. Walls, military outposts and frontier cities were all types of fortifications that were employed. Seventy-three-mile-long Hadrian’s Wall’s in northern Britain is the most well-known of these fortification. The Antonine Wall, built of stone, turf and wood, was used to extend the frontier beyond Hadrian’s Wall in A.D. 142. Lambaesis was established as military fort in 81. It later served as army headquartered in North Africa. Dura-Europos was built where the Romans seized a city on a cliff above the Euphrates from Parthians in the second century A.D. [Source: Andrew Curry, National Geographic, September 2012 ]

Major barriers included Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, the Germanic Lines (walls in Germany that extended 342 miles), Limes Transalutanus (60 miles of walls in Romania) and Fossatum Africae (152 miles in Algeria.)

Diplomacy, trade and violence — and the fortifications — were all used maintain borders and keep the frontiers intact. Of the thousands of kilometers of frontier, only a small portion was protected by walls. They were mainly built to seal gaps between natural barriers such as mountains, deserts, rivers and sea. Troops were concentrated in fortresses, ultimately making the territory beyond them in the interior vulnerable. Over time, the barriers were breached and barbarian incursions led to the fall of the western part of the empire in the 5th century.

Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: “A stunning network of walls, rivers, desert forts, and mountain watchtowers marks Rome’s limits. At its peak in the second century A.D., the empire sent soldiers to patrol a front that stretched from the Irish Sea to the Black Sea as well as across North Africa.The question isn’t just academic. Defining and defending borders is a modern obsession too. As politicians have debated building a wall between the United States and Mexico and troops face off across the land-mine-strewn strip of ground between the two Koreas, the realities the Roman emperors faced are still with us. Understanding why the Romans were obsessed with their borders—and the role their obsession played in the decline of the empire—might help us better understand ourselves.

Roads in the Roman Empire

The Romans built over 53,000 miles of paved roads, stretching from Scotland to East Europe to Mesopotamia in present-day Iraq to North Africa. It was the greatest system of highways that the world has ever seen until recent times. Roman roads were built primarily to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies. Roman legionnaires would not have been nearly as effective in their conquests if getting them supplies was difficult. The system was so well set up that commanders could accurately calculate how long it would take to get their armies from one place to another: from Cologne to Rome was 67 days, Rome to Brindisis, 57 days, and Rome to Syria (including two days at sea), 124 days. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]

The Romans built over 85,000 kilometers (53,000 miles) of stone-paved roads, stretching from Scotland to East Europe to Mesopotamia in present-day Iraq to North Africa. It was the greatest system of highways that the world has ever seen until recent times. Roman roads were built primarily to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies. Roman legionnaires would not have been nearly as effective in their conquests if getting them supplies was difficult. The system was so well set up that commanders could accurately calculate how long it would take to get their armies from one place to another: from Cologne to Rome was 67 days, Rome to Brindisis, 57 days, and Rome to Syria (including two days at sea), 124 days. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]

Roman roads were one of the main factors that allowed the ancient Romans to build, maintain and defend such a massive empire. These roads were so well designed and well constructed that some are still in use today. The saying "All roads lead to Rome" may not have been totally 100 percent accurate but it wasn’t that far removed from reality. [Source: P. Andrew Karam, Science and Its Times: Understanding the Social Significance of Scientific Discovery, Encyclopedia.com]

The engineering skill of the Romans and the lavish outlay of money made their roads can not be overstated. They were mainly military works, built for strategic purposes, intended to facilitate the dispatching of supplies to the frontier and the massing of troops in the shortest possible time. Beginning with the first important acquisition of territory in Italy (the Via Appia was built in 312 B.C.) they kept pace with the expansion of the Republic and the Empire, so that a great network of roads covered the Roman world. In Britain, for instance, the roads, some of which are still in use, converged at Londinium (London). [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932)]

The surface of the roads was rounded, and there were gutters at the sides to carry off rain and melted snow. Milestones showed the distance from the starting-point of the road and often that to important places in the opposite direction, as well as the names of the consuls or emperors under whom the roads were built or repaired. The roadbed was wide enough to permit the meeting and passing, without trouble, of the largest wagons. For the pedestrian there was a footpath on either side, sometimes paved, and seats for him to rest upon were often built by the milestones. The horseman found blocks of stone set here and there for his convenience in mounting and dismounting. Where springs were discovered, wayside fountains for men and watering-troughs for cattle were constructed. Such roads often went a hundred years without repairs, and some portions of them have endured the traffic of centuries and are still in good condition today.

Roman Military Infrastructure

The Roman armies built pontoon bridges and used horses to scout out the enemy on reconnaissance missions. During military campaigns officers stayed in tents outfit with floor and even couches and soldiers slept in tents called papiliones that opened from a cocoon-like roll into a tent with flaps that resembled a butterfly. [Source: Timothy Foote, Smithsonian, April 1985]

Flavius Vegetius Renatus (died A.D. 450) wrote in “De Re Militari”: “The legion carries with it a number of small boats, each hollowed out of a single piece of timber, with long cables and sometimes iron chains to fasten them together. These boats, joined and covered with planks, serve as bridges over unfordable rivers, on which both cavalry and infantry pass without danger. [Source: De Re Militari (Military Institutions of the Romans) by Flavius Vegetius Renatus (died A.D. 450), written around A.D. 390. translated from the Latin by Lieutenant John Clarke Text British translation published in 1767. Etext version by Mads Brevik (2001)]

The legion is provided with iron hooks, called wolves, and iron scythes fixed to the ends of long poles; and with forks, spades, shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows and baskets for digging and transporting earth; together with hatchets, axes and saws for cutting wood. Besides which, a train of workmen attend on it furnished with all instruments necessary for the construction of tortoises, musculi, rams, vines, moving towers and other machines for the attack of places. As the enumeration of all the particulars of this sort would be too tedious, I shall only observe that the legion should carry with it wherever it moves, whatever is necessary for every kind of service so that the encampments may have all the strength and conveniences of a fortified city.

Arms factories positioned along the roads kept the Roman armies supplied with iron armor, helmets, swords and javelins. The production of weapons was considered so important that arms factory workers were branded "as a deterrent against desertion."

Passages of Rivers by the Roman Military

Flavius Vegetius Renatus (died A.D. 450) wrote in “De Re Militari”: “The passages of rivers are very dangerous without great precaution. In crossing broad or rapid streams, the baggage, servants, and sometimes the most indolent soldiers are in danger of being lost. Having first sounded the ford, two lines of the best mounted cavalry are ranged at a convenient distance entirely across the river, so that the infantry and baggage may pass between them. The line above the ford breaks the violence of the stream, and the line below recovers and transports the men carried away by the current. When the river is too deep to be forded either by the cavalry or infantry, the water is drawn off, if it runs in a plain, by cutting a great number of trenches, and thus it is passed with ease. [Source: De Re Militari (Military Institutions of the Romans) by Flavius Vegetius Renatus (died A.D. 450), written around A.D. 390. translated from the Latin by Lieutenant John Clarke Text British translation published in 1767. Etext version by Mads Brevik (2001) ]

“Navigable rivers are passed by means of piles driven into the bottom and floored with planks; or in a sudden emergency by fastening together a number of empty casks and covering them with boards. The cavalry, throwing off their accoutrements, make small floats of dry reeds or rushes on which they lay their rams and cuirasses to preserve them from being wet. They themselves swim their horses across the river and draw the floats after them by a leather thong.

Engineering corps at a river crossing on Trajan's Column

“But the most commodious invention is that of the small boats hollowed out of one piece of timber and very light both by their make and the quality of the wood. The army always has a number of these boats upon carriages, together with a sufficient quantity of planks and iron nails. Thus with the help of cables to lash the boats together, a bridge is instantly constructed, which for the time has the solidity of a bridge of stone.

“As the enemy generally endeavor to fall upon an army at the passage of a river either by surprise or ambuscade, it is necessary to secure both sides thereof by strong detachments so that the troops may not be attacked and defeated while separated by the channel of the river. But it is still safer to palisade both the posts, since this will enable you to sustain any attempt without much loss. If the bridge is wanted, not only for the present transportation of the troops but also for their return and for convoys, it will be proper to throw up works with large ditches to cover each head of the bridge, with a sufficient number of men to defend them as long as the circumstances of affairs require.

Roman Bridges

The ancient Romans were the first civilization to build large, permanent bridges. Early Roman bridges used techniques introduced by Etruscan immigrants, but the Romans improved those skills, developing and enhancing methods such as arches and keystones. There were three major types of Roman bridge: wooden, pontoon, and stone. [Source Wikipedia]

Early Roman bridges were wooden, but by the 2nd century BC stone was being used. Stone bridges used the arch as their basic structure, and most used concrete, the first use of this material in bridge-building, incorporating volcanic ash, lime and gypsum. Also, they began to use iron clamps to hold together bridges, constructing midstream arches, and pentagonal stones to allow for wider vaults.

Between 150 and 50 B.C., many stone Roman bridges were built. Engineers began to use stone instead of wood and constructed longer-lasting bridges. These were the first large-scale bridges ever constructed.They were constructed by the Roman government primarily to serve the needs of the military and the empire's administration. Sometimes roads and bridges were used for commercial purposes, but this was not as common as you might think as boats better served the needs of the Roman economy.

Roman bridges were much larger than the bridges of other civilizations. They could be anywhere from 4.6 to 18.3 meters (15 to 60 feet) long. By the time of Augustus around the turn of the 1st millennium the maximum span of Roman bridges increased from around 24 meters (79 feet) in 142 B.C. to 35 meters (115 feet). The Ponte Sant'Angelo, built during the reign of Hadrian, has five arches each with a span of 18 meters (59 feet). Wider spans increase the bridge's drainage, reduce water pressure on the spandrels, and reduced the bridge's weight. Trajan's Bridge over the Danube featured open-spandrel segmental arches made of wood (standing on 40 meters (130 feet) high concrete piers). This was to be the longest arch bridge for a thousand years both in terms of overall and individual span length. The longest extant Roman bridge is the 790-meter (2,590 feet) Puente Romano at Mérida.

Roman bridge in Verona

Roman Tunnels

Victor Labate wrote: The Romans adopted the construction techniques of other civilizations to build a large number of tunnels in the territories that they controlled in Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. They built tunnels to transport water, to divert rivers, to drain lakes for the irrigation of agricultural lands, and for their road projects and mining operations.[Source Victor Labate, World History Encyclopedia, April 6, 2016 worldhistory.org ]

The Etruscans adopted the Persian-style qanat technique in the 6th century B.C. to build a large number of water-supply tunnels called cuniculi in the northeast of Rome. They later passed on their know-how to the Romans who also used the qanat method to construct aqueducts. Vitruvius in his On Architecture describes how Roman qanat tunnels were constructed with vertical shafts (called puteus or lumen) dug at 35.5 meters (115 feet) intervals, even though in reality intervals could vary between 30 meters (98 feet) to 60 meters (197 feet).

By the 6th century B.C., a second method of tunnel construction appeared called the counter-excavation method in which the tunnel was excavated from both ends. It was used to perforate high mountains when the qanat method was not a viable alternative. This method required greater planning and advanced knowledge of surveying, mathematics and geometry as both ends of a tunnel had to meet correctly at the center of the mountain..

The Saldae aqueduct system (in modern day Bejaia, Algeria) consisting of a 300 meter (984 feet) bridge and a 428 meter (1,404 feet) tunnel built by the Romans in circa A.D. 150. An inscription provides unique technical details about the construction of the tunnel and the problems faced by the builders. Nonius Daus describes how the two teams of builders missed each other in the mountain and how the later construction of a lateral link between the two galleries corrected the initial error.

Romans also dug tunnels for their roads whenever they encountered topographical obstacles such as hills or mountains, too high for roads to pass over them. An example is the 37 meter (121 feet) long and 6 meter (20 feet) high Furlo Pass tunnel (Passo del Furlo) built by emperor Vespasian in A.D. 69-79. The longest known Roman road tunnel is the 1 kilometers (0.6 miles) long Cocceius tunnel (Grotta di Cocceio) near Naples built in 38-36 B.C. using the counter excavation method. The Cocceius tunnel also had shafts which provided ventilation. It connected Lake Avernus with the city of Cumae and was built as Lake Avernus was in the process of being converted into a military port.

Tunnels were also built for mineral extraction, especially gold. Miners would locate a mineral vein and then pursue it with shafts and tunnels underground. Traces of such tunnels can still be found at the Dolaucothi gold mines in Wales. When the sole purpose of a tunnel was mineral extraction, construction required less planning as the trajectory of the tunnel was determined by the mineral vein.

Energy and Petroleum in Ancient Rome

Romans burned petroleum in the their lamps instead of olive oil. The Byzantines used naptha for their Greek Fire weapons. The first century B.C. historian Livy described torches wrapped in cloth and covered in sulphur, tar and quicklime that continued to burn after being drenched in water. Ancient texts also describe fire tricks that used concoctions made of sulphur, pitch, naphtha and quicklime that could be ignited by a drop of water.

The first references to oil were made on cuneiform tablets in Babylonia in 2000 B.C. It was referred to as naptu, which means "that which flares up." Naptu was used in construction, road building, waterproofing, skin ointments and cements. One cuneiform tablet from that era read: "If at a certain place in the land naptu oozes out, that country will walk in widowhood. If the water of a river bears . . . oil, want will seize on the people." Another states: "May donkey urine be your drink, naptu your ointment."

In the 5th century B.C. Herodotus described a famous spot in Persia where oil oozed from the ground. He wrote that a man with a wineskin "makes a dip with this, draws the liquid up, and then pours it over the receptacle; from there it passes into another, where it turns into three different shapes; the salt and the asphalt solidify while they collect on clay containers."

In ancient times oil came primarily from seepage. No one thought of drilling for it in the ground until the 19th century. In the 1st century B.C., the Greek historian Diodorus wrote: "of all the marvels of Babylonia the most amazing is the mass of asphalt produced there . . . Uncountable numbers of people have drawn from it, as from some vast spring, yet the supply remains intact."

In the 1st century A.D., the Greek geographer Strabo wrote: "if naphtha is brought near a flame, it catches fire, and if you smear some on the body and come near a flame, the body will catch fire. It cannot be quenched with water — it just burns harder — unless a whole lot is used, but it can be smothered and quenched with mud, vinegar, alum or birdlime."

Ports in the Roman Empire

Ports of the Roman Empire

Jason Urbanus wrote in Archaeology magazine:“Ports all over the Mediterranean, including Carthage, Ephesus, Leptis Magna, and Massalia, as well as those in Italy such as Puteoli, Ostia, and Centumcellae, formed the extensive network that allowed the Romans to bring the resources of foreign lands to Rome. Many of the goods brought to Portus were destined for the capital, while others were immediately redistributed to other ports in the Mediterranean. Portus, as the primary port of Rome itself, was the cornerstone of that system. [Source: Jason Urbanus, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2015]

“Writing in the second century A.D., the famed Greek orator Aelius Aristides marveled at the scope and efficiency of Rome’s maritime capabilities. “Here is brought from every land and sea, all the crops of the seasons and the produce of each land. The arrivals and departures of the ships never stop, so that one would express admiration not only for the harbor, but even for the sea. Everything comes here, all that is produced and grown … whatever one does not see here, it is not a thing which has existed or exists.” As the centerpiece of Rome’s grand shipping network, Portus allowed the city to enjoy all the resources of the known world — and left foreigners such as Aristides in wonder and amazement.

But, “Throughout its history, Rome’s size and potential always seemed to be commensurate with — and limited by — its port capabilities. During the first half of the first millennium B.C., the early Roman settlement relied on a small river harbor at the foot of the Capitoline, Palatine, and Aventine Hills, where a near-90-degree bend in the Tiber River created a small plain and natural landing for boats. Known as the Forum Boarium and the Portus Tiberinus, the site was also where two important ancient Italic trade routes crossed. This river port was, at this early juncture in Rome’s history, the heart of its supply, communication, and redistribution activities. Archaeological evidence found there, among the earliest ever discovered in Rome, indicates that even during the city’s early days, Romans were interacting with foreign travelers and importing goods from across the Mediterranean. By the fourth century B.C., as Rome was expanding beyond the site of the original seven hills and into central Italy, it began to outgrow its limited river port. Although Rome was connected to the sea via the Tiber River, seagoing ships and boats of substantial size could not safely maneuver up the river’s course to the city.

A significant step was taken in 386 B.C. when Rome founded the colony of Ostia at the Tiber’s mouth, some 20 miles away, not only to help supply the growing city with grain and other foodstuffs, but to enhance its connections with the Mediterranean. While Ostia eventually became a significant Roman city and played a major role in imperial Rome’s multifaceted port system, it proved insufficient as the city’s sole port. Although adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea, the site had geographical drawbacks. “Ostia could never handle massive numbers of ships,” says Keay. “It’s a river port, and the river itself is no good. It floods, it’s treacherous at the river mouth, and it’s not really deep enough.”

“Still limited by its lack of a deepwater maritime port, the Romans began to look southward. By the second century B.C., Rome controlled most of the Italian peninsula, as well as parts of Iberia, Greece, and North Africa. Roman ships were now bigger and were sailing farther abroad more frequently. The river port of Rome, Portus Tiberinus, even when combined with Ostia, couldn’t meet the increasing demands of an expanding Mediterranean-wide trade network. The establishment of Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) on the Bay of Naples formed part of the solution. At Puteoli, the Romans finally had a natural maritime harbor that could accommodate ships of all sizes as well as increased traffic. Puteoli evolved into the principal port of the Roman Republic, and remained so for two hundred years. But Puteoli itself was not without its limitations: Rome’s greatest commercial harbor was located more than a hundred miles south of the capital. Goods arriving on large ships had to be offloaded at the Bay of Naples and carted up to Rome overland, or transshipped onto smaller boats and ferried up the coast to Ostia, a three-day sail away. “It’s not ideal,” says Keay, adding, “The Romans realized this and toyed with the idea of building a port closer to Rome, an anchorage that would speed up the whole process and make it more efficient.”

“Yet, by the first century A.D., Rome could no longer be sustained by Italian harvests alone. It began to exploit its newly annexed fertile provinces, especially North Africa and Egypt, which soon became the largest supplier of Roman grain. It took as many as a thousand ships, constantly sailing, just to support the demand for grain in the city. With large grain ships typically capable of hauling more than 100 tons, and sea transport at least 40 times less expensive than land transport, Rome desperately needed a deepwater port close to home.

“At about this same time, Roman engineering was beginning to manifest its unparalleled capabilities. The emperor Claudius concluded that the time was right to build an artificial port within Rome’s environs, one large enough to accommodate the demands of an ever-growing city. Portus was built from scratch, a couple of miles north of Ostia, along a coastal strip on the Mediterranean near the mouth of the Tiber River. It would become the linchpin in a new imperial port system that enabled Rome to be continuously and efficiently supplied for the next 400 years.

Portus: Claudius' first harbour and hexagonal basin extension under Trajan

Portus — the Main Port of Rome

Portus, now some two miles from the Mediterranean shoreline, was built by the Romans in the 1st century A.D. to be their main maritime port. Jason Urbanus wrote in Archaeology magazine: Although almost entirely silted in today, at its height, Portus was Rome’s principal maritime harbor, catering to thousands of ships annually. It served as the primary hub for the import, warehousing, and distribution of resources, most importantly grain, that ensured the stability of both Rome and the empire. “For Rome to have worked at capacity, Portus needed to work at capacity,” says archaeologist Simon Keay. “The fortunes of the city are inextricably tied to it. It’s quite hard to overestimate.” Portus was the answer to Rome’s centuries-long search for an efficient deepwater harbor. In the end, as only the Romans could do, they simply dug one. [Source: Jason Urbanus, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2015]

Keay, of the University of Southampton, is currently director of the Portus Project,.One of the difficulties the team has faced in addition to the site’s enormous size is its complexity. Portus encompasses not only two man-made harbor basins, but all of the infrastructure associated with a small city, including temples, administrative buildings, warehouses, canals, and roads. Archaeologists have taken many approaches to investigating Portus. “Methodologically, the strategy has been to combine large-scale, extensive work using every kind of geophysical and topographic technique, with excavation reserved for relatively focused areas,” says Keay. “The aim is to try and understand a key area at the center of the port, which could provide a point from which to understand how the port worked as a whole.”

“The enormous engineering project was begun by Claudius around A.D. 46 and took nearly 20 years to complete. It was the largest public works project of its era. At its center was an artificial basin of nearly 500 acres, dug out of coastal dunes. A short distance from the mouth of this harbor were two extensive moles, or breakwaters, constructed to protect it from the open sea. A small island with a lighthouse stood between the two moles and guided ships as they approached. With a depth of 20 feet, the Claudian basin was large enough, deep enough, and sheltered enough to provide ample anchorage for large seafaring ships heavily laden with as much as 500 tons of cargo.

“In addition to the large basin, this early stage in Portus’ construction involved other facilities such as a smaller inner harbor known as the darsena, and various buildings associated with the registration, storage, and distribution of goods. The harbor complex was connected to the Tiber River two miles to the south via a network of canals, the largest of which measured nearly 100 yards wide. This greatly expedited the whole process of bringing goods from cargo ships to Roman households. Enormous warehouses were built at Portus that were capable of storing many months’ worth of grain. Portus became not only the place through which foodstuffs entered Rome, but also where they were stored.

“The construction of Portus brought great renown to Claudius and, later, to his successor Nero, who saw it to completion. Portus was commemorated on coins issued by the emperors and on a monumental arch erected by Claudius at the site. “There is an element to the port of Claudius that makes it clear that it is a vanity project,” says Keay, “and there is also an element that reflects the rhetoric of empire. The emperor is the great provider, who overrides nature in order to feed his people.”

The establishment of Portus by Claudius was just the first step in a process that led to the continual expansion and enhancement of the site over the next two centuries. In the early second century A.D., as Rome grew to its greatest territorial extent, the emperor Trajan was responsible for a massive enlargement and reorganization of Portus. Trajan, whose building projects were transforming the city of Rome, turned his architects toward the redevelopment of the existing harbor. As with many Trajanic projects, the goal was not only to provide new functional facilities, but ones that also symbolically celebrated the power and glory of his empire.

“At the heart of Trajan’s new harbor was another artificially dug basin just east of the existing Claudian basin. Its hexagonal shape, which has become Portus’ most iconic feature, survives today as a private lake for fishing on the estate of Duke Sforza Cesarini. The unusual design, which had no precedents in Roman harbor construction, provided increased functionality, as well as a unique aesthetic signature. The hexagonal basin not only increased Portus’ overall protected harbor space by nearly 600 acres, but the six sides of the new basin expedited the docking and unloading processes. Each of its sides, at a length of almost 1,200 feet, provided ample quayside space for berthing ships and handling cargo.

Buildings and Activity at Portus

Jason Urbanus wrote in Archaeology magazine: The new Trajanic harbor could accommodate about 200 ships, in addition to the 300 anchored in the Claudian basin. Rome had at last created a port suitable to its far-reaching Mediterranean maritime empire. If Claudius’ Portus was a statement of Rome’s ability to alter natural topography, Trajan’s harbor was a celebration of Rome’s design and construction capabilities. Each side of the hexagonal basin was adorned with new monumental buildings designed so that any traveler sailing into the harbor would be immediately confronted with the grandeur and power of Rome. Sightlines from the harbor led straight to impressive porticoes, temples, warehouses, and even a statue of Trajan, all framing the waterfront. In addition to its functionality, Portus was designed to deliver the message that Rome reigned supreme. “Portus is a statement about imperial power — it controls not just the Mediterranean but nature itself. It’s really the only time that the Mediterranean has been controlled by a single political power, and this port played a key role in enabling its authority to be maintained; only the Ottomans come close,” explains Keay. [Source: Jason Urbanus, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2015]

“Over the last few years, the Portus Project has been working on what would have been a thin isthmus of land between the Claudian and Trajanic harbors. There the team has uncovered the foundations of what Keay refers to as a shipyard — a massive warehouse-type structure associated with the dry-docking and maintenance of ships. The 780-by-200-foot building is believed to have stood nearly 60 feet high. Its facade was divided into a series of arched bays, some 40 feet wide, that opened onto the hexagonal basin. Keay thinks that the structure could also have some association with Roman naval activity. “Portus is the place from which the emperor sails out, and it’s the place from which new governors go out to their provinces,” he says. “There was a security issue at Portus, and it makes sense that there was a naval detachment here. I think our big building is part of that in some way.”

“There is also some evidence that the emperor himself maintained a presence at the site. Near the shipyard, the Portus Project has also investigated the so-called Palazzo Imperiale (Imperial Palace). This multifunctional complex covered nearly seven and a half acres, with prominent views across both basins. The three-story structure contained all of the appurtenances of a wealthy Roman villa — porticoes, mosaics, peristyles, and ornamental dining rooms, but also contained storerooms, offices, and production areas. Recently it was discovered that a small amphitheater was even added to the complex later in the third century. While the lack of epigraphic evidence makes it impossible to associate the building directly with the emperor, Keay believes it certainly would have been used by high-ranking government officials and representatives of the emperor who oversaw all aspects of port activity.

“At its height, Portus may have catered to a seasonal population of 10,000 to 15,000 people, although it was not primarily a residential site. Its bustling crowds would have consisted of merchants, shippers, dockworkers, administrators, and government agents, many of whom commuted from larger cities such as Ostia or even Rome. The traffic to and from the harbor is estimated to have been several thousand seagoing ships annually, as well as hundreds of smaller boats and barges that maneuvered around the various basins and canals and up the Tiber River. [Source: Jason Urbanus, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2015]

Once a ship entered Portus, it might temporarily anchor in either the inner or outer harbor basin as it awaited a berth quayside or for smaller boats to transship its cargo. After freight was registered and recorded, it was loaded into warehouses or onto smaller barges to be brought along the various canals and towed up the Tiber to Rome. Insight into the organization of the importation process and the procedures Roman officials followed has been uncovered at Monte Testaccio in Rome, where transport amphoras were discarded. Some of the amphoras bear small tituli picti — painted notations that record information about the type of product, its weight, origin, destination, merchant, or shipper. The tituli picti demonstrate how thoroughly each product was examined and the painstaking measures employed for each shipment of goods. “I think there’s an unimaginable complexity to the registration of cargo. The person responsible for the port needs to know where to assign ships, where particular cargoes belonging to particular merchants go, how material gets from one storeroom to another and then onto the boats that go up the Tiber,” says Keay. “It’s highly complex.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated November 2024