How the Roman Army built Bridges and Forts
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2024
- The greatest achievements of Rome's military engineers.
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:38 Marching camps
1:36 Bridges
2:40 Siegeworks
3:26 PIA VPN
4:32 Permanent forts
5:49 Roads
6:24 Frontier defenses
7:41 Canals
8:21 Civilian projects
8:54 The aqueduct of Saldae
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I live next to a roman road. The road from London to Dover. It's the winter solstice today, and the road is aligned with rising sun. Given the road is likely to be older, the question is that by chance?
Then another thing springs to my mind. What would an archaeologist in 5000 years time make of it? Well its clearly solar. It's lined with temples. We have the Temple of Asda, the Temple of Tesco's as well as lots of minor temples. We have one were there were pictures of just women with bare breasts, just like those in Knossos, on the walls with clear calendars underneath. All paying homage to a god who we believe was called Pirelli. So the civilisation must have been a matriarchy.
Of the above, the only bits that are true is the road, the alignment, and the facts. The problem is with modern archaeological thinking! 🙂
ㄹㄹㅇㄹㄹㄱㄹㅎㄹㄹ
Grunts digging holes will never go out of style
As an accomplished grunt, I thank you.
Mad respect for a man who could pinpoint both ends of a tunnel using nothing more than plumlines and measuring sticks.
I’ve tried to piece together in my head how one would even go about doing so.
I guess the first thing would be designating an actual straight line between the two points the tunnel was meant to connect: so some posts in a perfectly straight line between the two.
Then you have the z-axis(the height). I guess going to each post and measuring the difference in height, all the way over the goddamn mountain, adding them on the way up and subtracting on the way down, and re-zeroing back at where the exit is meant to be.
I hope that’s not what he did because he probably fucked up the first time if he did it that way, because it’s insane, and got very lucky the second time.
i think they call it 'math'.
"well, some did call him "two gun"
but that wasn't cuz he was sportin two pistols...."
@@alexanderstrickland9036I guess they went round the hill with gravity levels to discover the altitude at exit end wrt the source, which also enables survey of tunnel gradient. Line of sight rectangle surrounding the hill to locate entrances would then give a common angle or vector wrt the perimeter rectangle, using 345 triangle geometry to set perimeter corners.
And not just once - twice and even after getting roughed up and having his gear stolen. Wow
making a monument to your own great engineering with letter of praise is a big flex
Agrippa’s secret naval base at Portus Julius where he trained and constructed a fleet of 300 ships on a lake is one of my favorites
agrippa was such a dreamboat tbh. the goodest boye in the entirety of rome. the man knew how to get shit done in style
agrippin’ that shipussy
Yeah, we’ve seen the other toldinstone video too
@@DrPeculiar312 try listening to the history of Rome by Mike Duncan. Long before toldinstone mentioned it…
Who is Toldin? And what of his tone?
Very stupid pun. I love it.
Toldin is the host, so toldins tone is pretty good. But I'd also reccomend toldins tomes: Painted statues, Fat Gladiators and the other ones he reccomends.
Your toldin is the part of your brain that thinks about Rome, and toldin's tone is its resonant frequency
@@transvestosaurus878 I hear it can be heard entering and using the digital tombs tone inside JavasCrypt
Toldinstone is an anagram for tendons toil. It must be a reference to his travels and how he occasionally shows us history on site. The lore is way deeper than any of us thought.
3:20 If you actually go to Masada the ramp is still visible today, as is the nearby Roman camp. The stones have all fallen apart but the outlines are still pretty obvious.
Yes you get the same feeling of helpless foreboding as the defenders must have felt
I heard the same is true for an earlier Assyrian earthwork in Tel Lachish, Israel, that is still visible.
@@tomsuiteriii9742*Occupied-Palestine
All those engineers over all the millennia that made all these projects on pen and paper are the unsung heroes of history.
Ancient Roman engineers make me feel extremely stupid. Great video as always
What social status did military engineers and surveyors have in Rome compared to regular soldiers?
they where part of the army but where a special branch that was exempt from most labour duty and combat. They where often the most educated of the army being not only able to do mathematics but also read and write. While many soldiers may have been able to read not many as many could write and advance math was a skill few people had. they where often the children of minor lords and rich merchants. They also often where strategists that gave council to the leader in the operation due to the level of education many of them had and the fact that many of them lived longer than average soldiers due to not being in combat and if they where in combat it would be with the artillery.
When I see programs like this it makes me so proud to be Italian and to know that my forebears had done great amazing things Viva Roma Viva Italia !!!!
Do not dream about it! The engineers who built them were ROMANIANS! Your italian forebears were just a workers, nothing else. The Romanian Academy of Sciences and its greatest leader, Elena Ceausescu, proved it.
Rome, Renaissance, Venice, Banking, Marco Polo, Pizza...then silence. I guess all the smart Italians left for America.
It’s amazing that the soldiers were able to construct a palisade in a few hours. It kept them in fighting shape no doubt. And between the Roman’s and two centuries of shipbuilding it’s easy to see how much of Europe was denuded.
What do u mean denuded?
i think he means deforestation
When you learn about Roman engineering, structures such as the pyramids of Giza no longer need the evocation of lost knowledge, the mystical or alien intervention. If the Romans spent 40 years on one project, they could build 4 great pyramids.
But aliens bro
What's interesting is that there are hundreds of pyramids of various sizes across Egypt built centuries apart.
You can see the learning curve and many hit and misses before finally perfecting with the Great Giza pyramids
@@zainmudassir2964 To steel man the "ancient knowledge" or "Atlantean" people. They would say the Egyptians were trying to copy the pyramids. I don't believe this. The archaeology doesn't support this. But that's what they'd say. Which annoys me even more and encourages me not to engage with these people.
Which they also take as confirmation and then I remind myself not all intellects are equal. Not every person wants to put in the effort to examine ALL of the evidence. They only want to see evidence that confirms their bias.
When Graham Hancock talks of a "transfer of knowledge" I always wonder why it took thousands of years to transfer. Also how long Atlantean life spans are.
Except, Pyramids were built much earlier than first thought! I mean thousands of years earlier! They were the tallest made structures until the Eiffel tower
@@pashapasovski5860 If you say so
I guess that explains a lot about why the romans were so great at building engineering marvels.
Greetings from Sao Paulo, Brazil. It's always a great time to see that a new toldinstone's video is available and learn about Rome and antiquities with accurate facts and high quality analysis... as far as it can be with the knowledge and data that we have available haha. Thank you for your amazing work!
Suggestion: Do the longest prolonged engineering project, the Draining of Fucine Lake which started under Emperor Claudius and ended in 1878.
These videos pair excellent with some some garum on my bread and some egyptian beer in my gut
Keep up the amazing work, Garrett 👍
We may still admire the work of Roman military engineers even as far East as Shushtar, Iran.
The _Band-e Kaisar_ or _Pol-e Kaisar_ (Caesar Bridge or Caesar Dam) was commissioned by Shah Shapur I after defeating and capturing Emperor Valerian with his entire army at the Battle of Edessa in 260 AD.
So how did one become an engineer? In an era where formal eduction was scarce, how were these in dividuals trained? Common sense goes only so far when mathematics and science are required.
Maybe it goes in family?
Army trained. Army attracted vast amounts of recruits. Talents were determined and developed. He says as much in the beginning of the video: Army engineers were excerpt from the normal duties of soldiers.
It's only recently that math and science became part of engineering. Until a few hundred years ago it was all trial and error, lessons of experience and observation of what did and didn't work. One reason medieval cathedrals took generations to complete is that they often fell down in the process and had to be redesigned and rebuilt. The Romans had tried and true methods of building particular types of structure, worked out by long experience. They just built the next one based on experience of successful previous ones.
Daily training. But mostly money to buy the starting equipment.
@@b.a.erlebacher1139 The Roman Vitruvius literally wrote the book on architecture and includes such details as how to turn geometry into practical surveying. The overall *research* process might involve trial and error to advance (which hasn't changed all that much) and almost all of the workers would ill educated but you absolutely need math to make an aqueduct function properly or pour a Pantheon.
Everything is bigger in Texas, Rome - "Hold my Beer"
Engineers are the backbone of every civilization 💪
Even if some weirdos insist ancient marvels was work of aliens rather than human ingenuity
Hi from Wisconsin, avid watcher of your UA-cam content. I actually read Nake Statues on my way to Detroit as my long-term partner had a job offering. Several years later and I just noticed that your blue book is on my partner's Christmas list for me...lucky days! The next time you are in the Midwest for a book signing or whatever it is Roman scholars do professionally (lol) let us folks here know so I can say in person how appreciative we are.
Glad to hear it! As it happens, I live in Chicago, and I'll be doing a book signing here on Jan. 20. Stay tuned...
Well done, Mr. Ryan. Thank you for the content.
A pleasant voice and a wealth of Roman knowledge!! Thanks for sharing!
This is great, would be awesome to see one on byzantine military engineering too
He mentioned it here, he mentioned one example during Justinian's time
The engineering stuff is super interesting.
One of my favorite channels. The books are great.
Glad to hear it!
Garrett, great stuff. I would be interested in a video on Roman medicine, Galen, etc. his work on the circulatory system among others. Roman advances in the sciences which would later be lost with the fall, which would take at least 1,000 years to recover.
Awesome video! It would be great to see even more of these architectural videos
Babe wake up new toldinstone dropped
I'm curious about their surveying techniques and equipment. I've seen pictures but how did they use them?
Another fantastic video! Good job, well done 👍
Fascinating and amazing!
Great stuff!
I recall learning how big Roman forts were, and how they were constructed every day after marching. Was hard to belive. Still incredible to think about.
Hey man thanks for the great video,s youre the best
Really preferred the previous title. Great video as always, cheers!
I currently live in the historical city of Lambazis, and I say that this is the first time I have heard this information. Thank you very much
I don't know how I had not subscribed to this channel until today. Have you talked about the huge paving stones on the giza plateau? They seem almost as impressive as the pyramids.
They were basically the ancient equivalent of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, designing and building military and civil infrastructure.
True for most countries. Probably more in Global South where military is influencal and sometimes only organisation capable of large infrastructure projects
Or the Navy's Seabees 😉
Really doubt that any today military engineers can compare with Romans, with technology they have they make miracles too us. Maybe today we can achieve more(with our technology) but think in general people ancient time are much smarter and much better handling resource and energy because they don't have plenty like we have today.
Gotta respect the engineering spirit of ancient Romans!
awesome video :D
Love your videos, but please can you include metric measurements? It would make your content more accessible to people outside the US.
Regarding Ceasars Rhine bridge, a show can't recall had British Royal army engineers attempt to recreate the building of this bridge albeit across a smaller river in England. IIRC they could only get about halfway, but it was very interesting.
Great video.
This was great
Awesome! I think they and the victorian engineers of the 19th century would have understood and esteemed each other.
Amazing video, I love Roman history
Oh I enjoyed it
Thanks
The engineers and commanders get praise and memorials and rightly so. But I suspect there was a big organisation behind the curtains dealing with logistics and planning. Getting the right equipment to the right place at the right time, the mind boggles!
“When on campaign…” You mean when they were roamin’ around?
Yes, I do crack myself up.
Loved seeing my local site portchester castle, I can see it from my upstairs window
Caesar (or whoever attributes 'The Gallic Wars' to Caesar himself, we are not exactly sure) actually details the construction of the Rhine bridge in astounding detail
On the subject of forts, you mentioned that these incorporated "up to three rings of walls and ditches." At Ardoch fort in Scotland, they dug up to seven ditches. Either VERY hostile territory to build a fort or a bunch of very bored legionnaires. 😄
Hello, what abot about the private companies ? I have also heard!, from a friend of a friend of a tribune, that private companies were also building roads.
This just rules ... almost too much, but keep at it Dr. Ryan.
Impressive💪
Of all the ancient empires,rome was the only one that really imprinted their infrastructures in the land they conquered, empires or kingdoms before and after them in the ancient times or medieval period really didnt so that in a massive scale,
Maybe they did but then the Romans destroyed their entire cities, down to the last block.
As for the later ones, they're pretty much back to square one when the institutional knowledge of Rome and the rest of the ancient world was lost.
Dynasties of China
The way they could rouse and focus human knowledge, physicality, discipline and will into things that would last millenia was truly impressive.
Awesome
Would like 2CA book abt Roman Engineering and Architecture.😊
I was there it was cool to see
So caligula built a 4km bridge for fun instead of having his army walk 5km, what an impressive waste of time
Iirc, it wasn't for any military purpouse, but for himself to ride a horse over the water. Thus fulfilling some prophecy or somesuch.
It could have been done in order to keep the engineers busy and distract them from planning a rebellion?
He’d have fitted well into the European Commission - self-indulgent and pointless vanity projects and waste of resources
Just to put it in perspective, 400 acres of forest is an area aprox 1x1.6kms, its huge.
There is also the hypothesis that the name London, formally Londinium, came from an older settlement name relating to the Celtic god Lugh or Lugus, something like Lugdinium, similar to the original name of the city of Lyon
0:14 Where might I find the pictures you use, please. @toldinstone
They must have been different people to have achieved these things with muscle power alone. No machinery other than what they could build themselves.
The bit about the advance party laying out the grid for each day’s marching camp is a bit curious. That group would have been subject to attack or ambush while they were on the road or engaged in laying out the grid for the camp. So they had to have local protection while performing those duties.
To think the marching unit would be able to build a fortified, palisaded camp with a surrounded ditch and rampart in just a few hours after marching all day, then tearing the fortification down the next morning, marching all day, and repeating that daily … wow.
Some reason the bridge over the rhind blew my mhind the most
Anything Roman fascinates me especially their engineering, organization and mighty military, Rome would have never fallen if the generals and individual soldiers would have sworn allegiance to Rome...the civil wars killed Rome.
The roman ability to carry infrastructure with their legionaries really separated them from contemporaries
Hope that Roman Empire trend helped boost Toldins’ Channel
They were great engineers
A 3 mile long bridge built in a couple of hours? The Romans keep impressing me.
Did they ever build camps in areas without trees? If so how did they make it defensible and did they have trouble crossing big rivers with no trees nearby?
You adapt to what's available. You can see the Roman siege works at Masada (mentioned in the video) still today despite it being a fairly small affair because Masada overlooks the Dead Sea and the Romans mostly worked with stone. That said they a legion would always have need of wood for cooking, torches, catapults, etc and as Garrett mentions the baggage train supplying the legion included whole boats, so they probably had a lot of this carried with the legion.
They probably use whats in the area: sandstone, granite maybe even mud dried in the sun.
Roman did conquer Egypt, but if you didn't know Roman's would travel with wooden spikes. Writing of people campaigns talk about and describe them. And evidence shows it was used to help build temporary walls.
Sadly how specifically it was used is lost to time. But it seems it was used in different ways but still as a wall/border.
The armies always had scouts ahead searching for the best place to build. (Access to water, level ground, etc) Followed by a guarded supply chain.
Overnight marching camps were defended by a palisade of stakes. Each legionary soldier carried a bundle of them in his pack. Shelter was inside an 8 man tent, the parts divided to each man.
What is a ca-nail?
We need quality Engineers now in California. The Hi Speed Rail, that NO ONE needs, has become an insane boondoggle with huge cost overruns and no end in sight. What we needed is more water desalination plants, better schools, and forest fire prevention... but these idiot politicians just want to shave off a few mintes travel form L.A. to Sacramento. Meanwhile the streets of San Francisco are filled eith human waste as taxes rise. Sad to see your birthplace decay.
as if forest fire prevention and overexpansive settlement hasn't gotten you into the forest fire mess you're in now.
lol, if there's a lesson to be learned, there's a Californian incapable of learning it.
The idiot politicians aren’t interested in reducing travel time, they’re interested in lining the pockets of themselves and their political cronies. With that goal in mind, the project is a spectacular success.
caerleon mentioned lets go
what's the thumbnail painting? TIA ❤
I found it! I was able to view the thumbnail on its own and Google searched it :D
"The Catapult" by Edward Poynter
alternative title is "Catapulta"
@@diegoveloso3rd excellent, cheers for that
Wow
9:45 crazy thing about this is that algerians haven't changed a bit 😅
Can you imagine one of our modern buildings survive 200 years? Most start to crumble after 70 years. Our concrete is worse than the Roman's.
You say canal in such a strange way that it is causing me physical discomfort.
Can you please lower the Volume of the Intro please?!?
It's a borderline Jumpscare and I always turn down you videos when i start them now. And since your voice is relatively soft, it compounds the issue because I need to turn back up the volume after!
The intro is honestly very cool. Its succinct, its unique, it gives all necessary info. It's just too damn loud!
I mean that with all respect; i love your videos and find them very informative.
Thank you for all the videos you make!
People back then were more hardworking and skilled then anyone today
So they built roads through the Alps, huh, I wonder what they are/were like.
how often do you thing about ROME?
How did they sink the pilings for the bridge when the river was 25 foot deep?
Pile drivers, maybe on barges built for the occasion.
How would they be making their beams I wonder
Was this the original ancestor of today's " Linkdin Post"
The bridge over the Rhine walked so the Philadelphia i95 repairs could run
The trench is mightier than the sword.
Roman speed of construction: Jupiter! Look how fast we can do this if there are no unions!!
Whats up with your pronounciation of "canal"? It sounds like "canail"
Use of the metric system in your videos would be useful...
How many VPN adverts do you think we need to see on a daily basis and do you think we love you for showing us another one or do you think it really annoys us??? :-(
Nonius Datus wiki page NOW
Still thinkin bout them pigeons💪🐦
Fast!
Explore Golgumbaz Deccan india
The Romans built a 1300 foot bridge in 10 days using no electronics or gas powered vehicles and my county cant patch a mf pothole in less than 3 months