View Guide to Engineering Empire

Viewing Guide to Engineering Empire. You will have to listen closely to hear some of the information.  Read the questions here before viewing each part. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5obOUDyQ5s&t=2428s (total run time approximately 100 minutes).

 

Rome’s beginnings in the 800s-700s BCE were very modest.  It was a small village on the swampy banks of the Tiber River near the center of the Italian peninsula and its west coast. The town was a collection of mud and stick huts, surrounded by much more powerful and ancient peoples (tribes) up and down the peninsula.  What was the secret to Rome’s success? How did it come to conquer so much territory and become first the most powerful force on the Italian peninsula and then the ruler of an empire that spanned the entire Mediterranean Sea?   The documentary, Engineering Empire, emphasizes the role of science and engineering as key to Rome’s expansion.

Major Points of Engineering Empire part 1

·         The story begins with a feat accomplished by one of Rome’s most outstanding generals, Julius Caesar. With his armies Caesar more than doubled the size of Rome’s conquered territories. Caesar built two bridges across the Rhine River, during the Gallic War in 55 BC and 53 BC. Strategically successful, they are also considered masterpieces of military engineering. These bridges demonstrated that Roman power could easily and at will cross the Rhine (the borderline between Gaul and Germania) and henceforth for several centuries significant Germanic incursions across the Rhine were halted. Further, his feat served him in establishing his fame at home. Gaul corresponds roughly to what is today France and Germania roughly to Germany and some of the Netherlands.

·         Roman legend says the city was founded in 753 b.c. by two brothers, Romulus and Remus

·         The Etruscans were a powerful and well developed civilization near where Rome was founded. They were experts in metallurgy (work with metals) and hydraulics (harnessing water in inventive ways).

·         The city of Rome was a small swampy village before the Romans figured out how to drain the land. They used knowledge gained from Etruscans to do it.

·         The narrators says: During the age of Augustus, concrete solidified Rome's chokehold on Western Europe, allowing roman builders to dominate the landscape with massive manmade monoliths.  A monolith is a very large structure, like a colosseum.

The Creation of Rome

1. For whom was the city Rome named?

2. How was the population of Rome developed (where did the population come from)? What does it mean that early Rome was an “asylum”?

3. How did this contribute to the engineering of Rome? What was the Roman attitude toward the scientific knowledge of other civilizations?

Infrastructure of Rome

4. What was the Cloaca Maxima?

5. What was the Via Appia?

6. To build its roads straight and level, the Romans relied on the tool, which was a vertical pole that stood in the ground with a cross on the top. It was called a…

a. pozzolana   b. groma    c. speculum  d. fossa

7. What was unique about Roman concrete? (hint: this is why it could be used to build bridges)

8. How much water did the aqueducts carry to the city of Rome daily?

9. What engineering feat was key to the construction of the aqueducts?  WHY?

 

The Emperor Nero

1. What great engineering feat came out of the “Pleasure Palace,” also called the “Golden House” (Domus Aurea)?

2. What happened to Nero’s Golden House after he died?  Why?

The Emperor Vespasian

3. What did Vespasian turn this area near the Golden House into?  What events occurred here?

4. What was the velarium?

5. What was the hypogeum?

travertine: a hard marble-like stone found in the vicinity of Rome used to decorate the outside of many Roman buildings. The core of buildings was concrete, which was then covered with travertine or marble slabs and sometimes bricks.

The Emperor Trajan

Trajan was an ambitious warrior from the province of Spain, whose battlefield triumphs had caught the eye of the ailing emperor Nerva.  Having no sons of his own, Nerva adopted Trajan as his son and heir.

With Trajan, “There is a widening of the idea of what it meant to be Roman and who could help the state and who would participate in the state.  …..Trajan is the first of a whole series of emperors who come from outside of Italy.”

6. What was unique about Trajan compared to other Roman emperors?

7. Describe the layout of Trajan’s forum/market.  Where was it, what did it have?

8. Who was Apollodorus of Damascus?

The Emperor Hadrian

9. Why was Hadrian’s Wall built?  Where was it built?

10. What were superforts?

11. Once completed, what had Hadrian achieved for the empire with his wall?

12a. What was the Pantheon?  Where was it built?

12. What “tricks” did the engineers use to make the Pantheon so tall?  What was the “oculus”?

The Emperor Caracalla

13. What were the purposes of baths (thermae) other than bathing?

14. Who was allowed to visit the baths?

15. What was beneath Carcalla’s Bath Complex?

16. Why is the Bath Complex such a melding of Roman engineering achievements? (Examples of what it included…)