What were the achievements of Rome in the areas of literaturebuildingand art?

Answer 1

Classical Latin literature produced literary giants like Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Horace, Martial and others and was very influential in European literature until the early 20th century.

Roman art produced beautiful statues, mosaics, frescoes,pottery silverware, cameos and jewelry. Roman sculpture influenced renaissance (14th-15th centuries) baroque (17th-a1th centuries)and neoclassical (18th-19th centuries) sculpture.

The biggest feature of Roman architecture is what historians call the Roman architectural revolution or concrete revolution. This involved the extensive use of concrete, the barrel arch and the vaulted arch.

Although the Romans were not the first in history to use concrete, they developed a type of concrete (opus caementicium) which was as resistant as modern concrete and which also set underwater (and therefore could be used to build docks for ports, dams, aqueducts and bridges). It was less fluid than modern concrete and had to be layered by hand. It was made by mixing a volcanic rock called pozzolana (which is named after Pozzuoli, a suburb of Naples) with lime and adding rubble from stones, bricks or pottery shreds as aggregates which added body and strength to it. It was one of the three elements which enabled the Romans to go beyond the use of Greek methods of enclosing space by the use of cut-stone and post-and-beam or post-and-lintel structures. Concrete had technical and practical advantages. It was exceptionally strong and could span great distances when shaped into arches, vaults and domes. It could be moulded. It was layered into a formwork and it took the shape of its container. It did not require skilled labour and therefore was cheaper. It was much faster for construction than laborious masonry walls. It was safer because concrete-vaulted roofing was fireproof, unlike the wooden-beamed roofs of traditional construction methods.

With this revolution the potential of the previously little used arch, vault, and dome was fully exploited for the first time. The Etruscans are said to have invented the simple (barrel) arch. The oldest example of the vaulted arch has been found in the Greek city of Pergamon (in western Turkey). The vaulted arch came into two forms: the groin arch was formed with two to four intersecting barrel arches and the rib arch, where the intersecting barrels were not of the same diameter. The Romans were first to fully appreciate the advantages of the arch and the vault. The arch has a strong load- bearing capacity. The vault has an even greater load bearing capacity and its structure is suited to support large roofs. Their construction in concrete made them easier to build and even stronger. This led to the use larger and monumental arches and vaults on a grand scale. However, the Romans did not abandon masonry arches and vaults.

Concrete and the arch and the vault became essential for large buildings and roofs. They were used to build basilicas (public buildings) amphitheatres (arenas), theatres, baths, circuses (racing tracks) domes, forts and fortifications, bridges, aqueducts, and dams. It was also used to assist the construction of the stone-paved roads.

The Romans invented segmental arch (a flatter arch in which the curve is a less than semi-circular segment of a circle). They realized that an arch did not have to be a semicircle. These arches were used regularly for houses, warehouses and bridges. The Limyra Bridge in south-western Turkey had 26 segmental arches. Its 27th arch at the eastern end collapsed and was replaced with by two smaller, semi-circular arches.

Concrete also enabled the Romans to be the first to build large and monumental domes. The best example of this is the dome of the rotunda of the Pantheon in Rome (a temple dedicated to all gods which is well preserved because it was converted into a Christian church). It is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.

The Romans experimented with the pendentive dome in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It was fully developed with the revolutionary structure of for the famous Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople (Istanbul) in the 6th century. These are masonry domes which rest on pendentives: devices which allow the placing of a circular dome over a square room or an elliptical dome over a rectangular room. They are triangular segments of a sphere which fill the spaces between four arches placed in a square shape and form a continuous circular or elliptical base which supports the dome.

Knowledge of how to make concrete was lost after the Romans and re-emerged in the 19th century, but with a different type..

Roman architecture influenced renaissance (14th-15th centuries) baroque (17th-a1th centuries)and neoclassical (18th-19th centuries) architecture.