ABSTRACT

Many historians have noted that although the Greek culture tended to create ideas, their Roman counterparts concentrated on developing them into something more practical. As a simplification, it has been said that the Greeks asked “why” and the Romans asked “how.” The Roman society spawned excellent civil engineers. They used their talents to create many civic improvements like roads, aqueducts, and public buildings. Most of these achievements involved the use of arches. An arch is formed when the downward force of gravity acting on the stones of a curved open structure is counterbalanced by its own curved shape, with the force being redirected outward. In a structure created by several arches place side by side, the outward pressure from one arch is counterbalanced by one or more adjacent structures. Egyptian pyramids were solid structures that required a vast amount of stone to construct. A Greek building such as the Parthenon depends on the strength of stone beams to span between columns and to carry the weight of the roof, but stone is not well suited to that purpose, because it lacks tensile strength. Arches, when made into domes and barrel-vault roofs, can be used to create open interiors, and don’t require nearly as much stone material.