65
Virgin "It's literally cheaper to keep repairing it" vs. Chad "I don't care how 'overengineered' you say this is, the budget is coming from the Emperor himself"
(media.piefed.social)
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
65 points (97.1% liked)
RoughRomanMemes
675 readers
60 users here now
A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.
RULES:
-
No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.
-
Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.
-
Follow Piefed.social rules.
MORE COMMS ON THE HISTORYVERSE:
- !historymusic@quokk.au
- !historygallery@quokk.au
- !historymemes@piefed.social
- !historyruins@piefed.social
- !historyart@piefed.social
- !historyartifacts@piefed.social
- !historyphotos@piefed.social
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Run cargo trucks at highway speed over Roman roads and see how well they hold up.
Heavier vehicles do dramatically more road damage than light ones, and a horse cart weighs a while lot less than even a compact car.
Roman road construction isn't some ancient lost secret that cannot be recreated, it just isn't fit for modern purpose.
So my sister is a civil engineer. I asked her: „The damage a vehicle does to the road doesn't increase linearly with the weight, right? It's quadratic.“
„Oh no“, she replied „it's to the ~~sixteenth~~ power.“
correction: 4th power
Oh god. That's a rare fucking power to see.
Is that tire pressure (on the pavement), total vehicle weight, or axle weight?
I'm sorry, I don't know. I'm not the civil engineer.
If you asked her sometime, I'd be very appreciative.
Ok, she issued a correction.
It's the axle weight to the power of 4.
Ah. That's still uncommonly high though. I see why they say trucks do almost all of the damage.
Looks like it's axle load, and damage is measured by time for the road to become unacceptably broken by whatever standard.
I'm pretty sure modern traffic does use Roman roads, although extreme grades and an uneven surface limits the possible speeds. This meme is saying the opposite thing, which is that Roman roads were overengineered.
I question that, even. Juvinal's cart loaded with Ligurian marble would have weighed a damn lot.