Roman Innovations

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Recommended: Architectural influences from Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire

Thesis: The Ancient Romans stood to be the finest architects and builders.
Points supporting the statement
1. To start with, the Romans were the greatest builders as a result of building roads as a method of transportation. The first thing the Romans did upon entering a new region, after winning the war that gained them their new territory, was construct roads and bridges. This was the best way to “Romanize” the new areas, as it permitted easier communication between the colony and the mother country. The Romans initially built roads in Britain; the roads were over 9,000 kilometres. (“The Great Builders”). The roads were so well built that they can still be seen today, 2000 years after they were first built. The purpose was so that the Roman army is able to move soldiers and all their gear around the country. They constructed them as straight as possible, in order to travel as quickly as they could. Roman roads sloped down from the middle to ditches on either side, allowing the rain to sewer away and not make the road muddy. While minor roads may have already existed, the Romans created an extensive network of roads that linked all of the significant cities together. The road network that they created is very comparable to the highway system that is used today. The Romans undoubtedly understood the significance of good basics as a basis to the excellence and strength of the finishing outcome. At the peak of Rome's expansion, no less than 29 great military highways radiated from the capital (“Wikipedia”, 2014). Overall, Roman roads were vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, the roads demonstrated that the Romans were the greatest builders.
2. Secondly, the Romans were the finest builde...

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...their ziggurats out of mud-brick, or adobe. Ziggurats are very high buildings. They started building them by making a large flat platform of mud-brick, and then they make to some extent a slighter platform on top of the first one, and another on top of that, until the raised area is just a slight larger than a temple. They thought it was better to pray to the gods from as close as possible, and so if the gods lived up in the sky they had to build great platforms to get near them. The massive step pyramid measured 64m in length, 46m in width and over 30m in height (“Ziggurat of Urt, Wikipedia”). The height is speculative, as only the foundations of the Sumerian ziggurat have survived. In short, the Ancient Sumerians outdid the Romans by constructing high buildings in order to pray to the gods from as close as possible, whereas the Romans did not accomplish that.

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