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How are Rome's monuments still standing?

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Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#161

Post by Bayart »

valarauko wrote: post #40
mrkstu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as their wealth was staggering, they could afford to build 'strong' more than most ancient civilizations and most of the conquerors just were assimilated rather than wanting to tear it down to the dirt.

The Romans weren't any more significantly wealthier than other contemporary Old World civilizations/empires - China, Persia, or India, for example. Conquerors being assimilated is a common theme that runs across most of these civilizations as well. However, monumental buildings that survive invading armies just tend to be dismantled/repurposed by the locals for the building material over time. I suspect that part of…

Every single building that wasn't reused was dismantled for materials. Every single one.

There's absolutely nothing special about Roman monuments.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#163

Post by Joeri »

virtue3 wrote: post #140
poo-yie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I have a hobby of restoring vintage and antique tools. Same observation regarding how disposable many modern items are.

As someone that does swing dancing and with quite a lot of people into vintage stuff there has been this talk of "survivor" bias whenever we talk about how stuff was made better back then. Naturally the cheap stuff didn't tend to even remotely make it this far. Curious what your opinion is as I haven't heard much about tools etc.

I think modern day goods are better at being just durable enough to serve their intended lifetime, but no more than that.

Also, I think every generation has products that last a really long time. My personal example is that 30 years ago I saved up my allowance to buy a casio keyboard, which after a few years moved into an unheated attic, and then some more years after that to a cold and damp basement. Recently I dug it up out of the basement, wiped off a thick layer of gunk, put in a fresh set of batteries, and aside from one status led not working it works as well as the day I bought it, and even the plastic hasn’t discolored much.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#165

Post by Bayart »

asimpletune wrote: post #159
Bayart wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fountains have nothing to do with (ancient) Romans. Italians didn't invent modern water management.

Really? I thought those fountains were a public service in Roman antiquity as well?

They're not the same fountains, nor the same water grid (through the modern grid might use portions of the Roman one). There were centuries where Rome was completely abandoned and reduced to a collection of villages and feudal holdings. They used wells for water access.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#166

Post by rbobby »

rurp wrote: post #57

Tangentially related to this, one of my hobbies is to explore old long abandoned ghost towns and mining camps in the Southwest US. It is really impressive how well many of these structures have held up in harsh climates. One of my favorite parts is seeing how repairs were improvised in the wilderness using whatever supplies happened to be available. The standard approach to trash back then was to throw it in a pile n…

> A modern beer bottle looks paper thin compared to one a century old.

I wonder if that is due to how much smoother transportation is now.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#167

Post by qwytw »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #48
atdrummond wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have the energy to revisit the arguments about Roman concrete that come up every time it is mentioned on HN. Needless to say, the notion that their “superior” method was “forgotten” is a massive oversimplification of what actually happened. Another comment made my point better than I did - which was that Roman buildings that remained standing did so because they were useful for some purpose, often an alternat…

> which was that Roman buildings that remained standing did so because they were useful for some purpose, that's a fallacy. A lot of buildings were useful back then, it wasn't easy to build them nor cheap. But most of them collapsed, because they weren't strong enough. You get roman buildings everywhere in Europe and Northern Africa, a lot of civilizations lived there in the past 40 centuries and their remains are sc…

There are very few Roman buildings that had survived intact. Besides the theaters and aqueducts there are basically none which were not later turned into churches. While Roman buildings might have been stronger than those built by the preceding civilizations (then again in the case of Europe (outside of Greece) and Northern Africa Roman there was very little competition, who else built massive coliseums at the the time?) most ancient buildings did not just simply collapse due to age but were destroyed by people who wanted to reuse their building material.

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#168

Post by asimpletune »

Bayart wrote: post #165
asimpletune wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I thought those fountains were a public service in Roman antiquity as well?

They're not the same fountains, nor the same water grid (through the modern grid might use portions of the Roman one). There were centuries where Rome was completely abandoned and reduced to a collection of villages and feudal holdings. They used wells for water access.

Super interesting, ok I think I just assumed otherwise but thanks for the explanation.

One follow up though, did ancient Romans have fountains? Maybe not the same ones that exist today, but more or less did they, ancient Romans, have these public water services as well?

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#169

Post by [deleted] »

Bayart wrote: post #158
asimpletune wrote: post #93

It’s not just the monuments. Everywhere you go in Rome there are fountains with cold, clean drinkable water. The combination of the roads, rivers, infrastructure, and monuments leaves you feeling like we kind of aimed a little low, at times.

The fountains have nothing to do with (ancient) Romans. Italians didn't invent modern water management.

[deleted]

Re: How are Rome's monuments still standing?

#170

Post by freewilly1040 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #60

How many of these have undergone serious repairs? I've seen multiple news stories about colosseum repairs and renovations during my lifetime, and I'm sure there were plenty of earlier efforts. Rome has burned or been hit by major earthquakes multiple times since these things were built.

I’m currently wrapping up a trip touring many ancient monuments during winter (aka off-season), and nearly all of them were having some kind of renovation work being done. Usually it’s a combination of whatever ancient stone is left from antiquity, combined with new material of the same type that would have been used originally (though not in all cases, there is some form of “artificial stone” that is used at times, not sure of what that is).

So, my guess at the answer to your question would be all of them, many times over.

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