It's simpler to over engineer an aqueduct that lasts for millennia than to make a building just strong enough that it won't fall apart for at least 30 years
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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Also, using unreinforced concrete helps with the longevity. Rebar eventually rusts and jacks apart what it was holding up.
I'm curious now how overengineered they were, exactly. They didn't have CAD, but they had plenty of time to learn by trial and error.
Roman engineer is called to assist some locals in the province wo are having some trouble with digging a tunnel for an aquaeduct
Finds they already started digging from both ends, noting unusual to him, proceeds to measure the unfinished tunnels anyway
Finds that the combined length of both ends is significantly longer than the width of the mountain
Writes a tirade filled letter home, complaining about the provincials being a bunch of stupid barbarians who don't even know how to dig a tunnel from both ends and actually meet in the middle
Soo did the resulting aqueduct end up with a jog in the middle and a couple dead ends? Where was this?
I don't know, but apparently the engineer's letter has been preserved, or at least the part where he complains about the locals' incompetence.
Now let’s see the Roman double a cube.
I’ll wait.
Romans, making a scale model and just eyeballing it: "Good enough for government work"
Plato would slap them from the grave for not using pure geometry. He did the same when someone used a machine to do the work.
It’s an impossible problem using just compass and straight edge (proved impossible in the 1800s) but the greeks and romans were obsessed with trying to figure it out.
A Greek philosopher like Plato would scream, sure. But the Romans in general were way more practical; I wouldn't be surprised if their answer was simply to make each edge 5/4 larger (a 2% error is almost nothing for most purposes).
I've always found it amusing that, for all the use of advanced technology and engineering from the Romans, you don't really have much in the way of contributions to mathematics, physics, etc, from Roman writers. "Too thinky, not practical enough >:("
Hell, even the only Roman philosophers of note are all pretty orthodox thinkers of a pre-established Greek school. Yet our surviving engineering texts from Roman authors are [chef's kiss]
It's funny what results cultural priorities can produce.
The problem isn’t about getting close enough. It’s a mathematics question on figuring out cube roots. You can do it with machines but it’s impossible to do with straight edge and compass. The greeks and romans wanted to figure out if there was a general solution using straight edge and compass so a close enough guess wouldn’t work. They already had solutions like that.
This problem was a head scratcher for literally millennia along with squaring the circle and trisecting an angle. All three were proved impossible to do with just straight edge and compass.
Ah, but Plato was Gr*ek. Latin problems demand Latin solutions.
FUCK
Fun fact, nobody knows WTF they were doing with those gromae. Probably not calculus, though.