The quality of Roman engineering was superb. The Romans are famous for their aqueducts, bridges and stone paved roads. The latter consisted of ditches dug to the rock bed, filled with rubble and gravel up to 1 metre from the surface and paved with rectangular or polygonal stone of lava slabs embedded in a layer of coarse concrete and a layer of fine concrete.
The Romans effected what historians have called the Roman or concrete architectural revolution, which was based on the large scale use of concrete, the simple (barrel) arch and the vaulted arch (vault). They invented a type of concrete which was as strong as modern concrete and which also set underwater. It was less fluid than modern concrete and had to be layered by hand. It was cheaper than using stone to build walls and it could be layered by unskilled workers and much more quickly. It could be moulded into shapes by using formwork. The Romans were the first to fully appreciate the strong load bearing capacity of the arch and to make large and monumental ones to to use them expensively. The same applies to the vault, whose load bearing capacity is even stronger and whose structure is suited for large roofs. Arches and vaults were built mostly in concrete, even though the Romans still built masonry ones occasionally. The Romans built groin vaults, which consist of two barrel vaults intersected at right angles which create four curving surfaces that draw the eye up and toward the center. Thee three elements enabled the Romans to build very large buildings and to go beyond the post and lintel system of Greek architecture.
The Romans also used the arch to build arched bridged which could be built much longer and could cross much wider rivers and valleys than before.
In philosophy the Romans adopted the two main schools of Greek philosophy of their time: Stoicism and Epicureanism. Epicurean philosophers were Lucilius Balbus, Amafinius, Catius Rabirius, and Lucretius. Stoic philosophers were Cicero, Cato the Younger Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Annaeus Cornutus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. An important skepticist philosopher was Sextus Empiricus. Plutarch was a Platonist.
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