Anthemius of Tralles was a patient man. He spent long hours composing his mathematical treatises,
watching light play over his convex mirrors,
and living out the quietly busy existence of a Roman gentleman scholar.
When it came to his upstairs neighbor Zeno, however, Anthemius had no patience left.
Their feud had begun with those little annoyances that apartment dwellers inflict on one another.
It escalated when Zeno insisted on building a wall that blocked the light into Anthemius’ rooms.
Anthemius protested, to no avail. He brought the matter to court,
and lost. Finally, with no other options left, he activated his earthquake machine.
One day, when Zeno was scheduled to have a dinner party, Anthemius brought a number
of large cauldrons into his rooms, and filled them water. Covering each cauldron,
he connected it to a leather-encased pipe that ran up to the apartment’s ceiling.
Once Zeno’s guests had arrived, Anthemius lit fires beneath the cauldrons.
Steam rose through the pipes until it reached the leather covering their ends;
and there, unable to escape, it stopped. As the steam pressure rose,
the pipes began to pulse and vibrate, shaking the entire house. Zeno and his guests,
terrified, ran down to the street, shouting about an earthquake – and Anthemius had his revenge.
Anthemius’ earthquake machine stood in a long line of classical steam-powered gadgets.
Five centuries earlier, at the height of the Roman Empire, Hero of Alexandria had written a treatise
explaining how to open temple gates, play organs, and spin a turbine with steam. At the time Hero’s
treatise was written, the Romans were in the midst of what was – by ancient standards – an impressive
economic expansion, marked by the mass production of key goods, an enormous expansion in mining,
and growing use of water power. In the light of these developments,
steam-powered devices like the earthquake machine might seem like missed opportunities. Why didn’t
the Romans ever try to build a practical steam engine? Where they ever close to the sort of
industrial revolution that transformed British and global history in the eighteenth century?
It might be best to begin by dispelling a few popular myths. First, it’s often claimed that
the Romans were uninterested in technological innovation. Although the Roman elite, as we’ll see
in the second part of this video, tended to regard mechanical tinkering as a commoner’s pursuit,
they were acutely interested in inventions and ideas that could make them money. The Senate,
for example, made a point of preserving and translating a Carthaginian handbook that
outlined innovative methods of farming. And in one of his treatises, Cicero praised the Romans – in
direct contrast to another modern stereotype – for being more inventive than the Greeks.
It’s also said that Roman technology was stagnant. While it’s true that there were no
dramatic advances, the Roman era witnessed the appearance of blown glass, the screw press for
olives and grapes, the hydraulic concrete that built structures like the Pantheon,
and many other inventions that impacted the lives and livelihoods of millions.
To modern observers, perhaps the most striking of these inventions was the vallus,
a reaping machine used widely in Roman Gaul. This first mechanized harvester consisted of a
two-wheeled wooden frame whose front was fitted with a bin and rows of knives. As the frame was
driven forward by a mule, the knives cut through rows of wheat, tipping the heads into the bin.
A third myth is that the Roman institution of slavery discouraged labor-saving devices. Contrary
to what you might assume, slave labor was not cheap. Slaves represented a serious investment,
and their owners were motivated to ensure that their labor generated the maximum possible profit.
The slave-worked brick and tile yards established on many estates around Rome to feed the emperors’
building projects illustrate the sensitivity of large landowners to economic opportunity.
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The Romans, to resume, were less averse to technological innovation than is often assumed.
And, at least at first glance, certain aspects of their economy seemed to be primed
for industrialization. The stability of the core provinces during the long Roman peace
enabled modest but real economic growth. Although most economic activity was always local,
there was intense long-distance trade in grain, wine, olive oil, and other goods,
driven largely by the need to supply the city of Rome and the legions on the frontiers.
Although small workshops made up the backbone of the Roman economy,
several industries featured examples of what might reasonably be called mass production. In late
antiquity, when the emperors established a network of arms factories, mints, and weaving centers,
standardized goods were manufactured on a grand scale under the auspices of the government. The
most interesting instances of mass production, however, were created by private enterprise.
Take, for example, the sprawling fish-processing factories that
dotted the shorelines of what are now Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.
These facilities featured purpose-built areas for gutting and preparation, concrete salting vats,
and rows of vessels in which garum – the infamous sauce made from fermented
fish guts – ripened. The salted fish and garum they produced was often shipped as far as Rome.
Mass production on an even more impressive scale characterized the manufacture of terra sigillata
pottery, a glossy red tableware made in northern Italy and Gaul during the early imperial era.
The pots were produced in enormous qualities by workshops using standardized molds,
and fired in kilns capable of handling as many as 40,000 vessels simultaneously.
The most modern-seeming sector of the whole Roman economy, however, was mining. Throughout
the empire, but most dramatically in Spain, the Romans mined on a truly industrial scale.
When tunneling into hard rock, they drove shafts up to 200 m deep, pumping groundwater
up from the works with ranks of slave-operated treadwheels. Carts carried ore to the surface,
sometimes moving along primitive railroads in the form of tracks cut into the tunnel floor.
Open-pit workings were equally sophisticated. The colossal mine at Las Medulas in northwestern
Spain, 2 km across and up to 200 m deep, was ringed by no fewer than seven large aqueducts.
These fed reservoirs perched along the rim of the pit,
which were periodically emptied, sending water cascading downhill
with a force that stripped away debris and exposed the gold-bearing deposits below.
Equally striking, if less dramatic, was the widespread use of power sources beyond
human and animal muscle. Water mills for grinding grain could be found in every part of the empire,
sometimes designed on an industrial scale. A famous example – at Barbegal, near Arles – was
served by a purpose-built aqueduct 9 km long, and consisted of two parallel rows of millhouses,
each equipped with an overshot waterwheel. Together, its 16 mills were probably capable
of producing enough flour each day to feed more than 10,000 people.
Finally, as mentioned at the beginning of this video, Roman scientists and engineers
experimented with steam power. An especially intriguing product of their tinkering was the
device known as Hero’s aeolipile, a hollow sphere mounted on a pivot over a covered cauldron.
When the water in the cauldron was heated, steam was forced through pipes into the sphere. As the
steam escaped through a pair of angled outlet vents, it caused the sphere to spin – making
this device the first known steam turbine. To summarize: far from being opposed to
technological innovation, the Romans welcomed it, especially when it promised a clear financial
reward. The Roman economy was characterized by the mass production of certain key goods,
by large-scale mining, and by extensive use of water power. And there was, at least in
academic circles, an understanding of the basic principles of steam power. In view of all this,
it might seem as though the Romans were on the cusp of a British-style industrial revolution.
But as we’ll see in the second part of this video, that was never the case.