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madiosi said:
But a rebelious wife, a other category humans, which deserved crucifixion.
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So let me get this straight! My engineer husband botches his job. And I pay for his incompetence by being crucified naked alongside the road? Where is the justice in that? No wonder I am a rebellious wife!!! :mad:
 
l'bogo said:
I'm not an engineer, but this is a drainage problem, due to the presence of undrained water: you have liquefaction of sands.
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The actual cause of this collapse is that the section runs over grounds with peat layers. During construction, the soil has been reinforced with sand/cement pilars in the ground, but this has proven to be an inadequate solution. They would have better driven real reinforced concrete pilars as deep foundation into the ground, put a bridge deck on them and have that carry the road. But that is way more expensive solution.
 
Loxuru said:
The actual cause of this collapse is that the section runs over grounds with peat layers. During construction, the soil has been reinforced with sand/cement pilars in the ground, but this has proven to be an inadequate solution. They would have better driven real reinforced concrete pilars as deep foundation into the ground, put a bridge deck on them and have that carry the road. But that is way more expensive solution.
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As you can see the road is wet of rain water. The central section is uncovered by cement or other waterproof layers, the water flow into the body of road...
The same disaster was occurred near Venice some years ago.
 
Loxuru said:
The actual cause of this collapse is that the section runs over grounds with peat layers. ....
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The lands with peat have serious problems of subsidence and differential settlements, such as the Coliseum in Rome or the famous leaning tower of Pisa, tilted. In Venice there is a big problem of subsidence affecting the entire city that is slowly sinking.
 
Barbaria1 said:
So let me get this straight! My engineer husband botches his job. And I pay for his incompetence by being crucified naked alongside the road? Where is the justice in that? No wonder I am a rebellious wife!!! :mad:
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Barb, crucifying you and others like you along modern road would be a really bad idea. Rubbernecking at a walking pace is fine. Rubbernecking at 70 mph/120 kph, not so much.
 

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Barbaria1 said:
So let me get this straight! My engineer husband botches his job. And I pay for his incompetence by being crucified naked alongside the road? Where is the justice in that? No wonder I am a rebellious wife!!! :mad:
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That's roman peace and roman justice, Barb!
I ask me, why you married so a botch engineer.
 
In the consulate of Marcus Licinius and Lucius Calpurnius, the casualties of some great wars were equalled by an unexpected disaster. It began and ended in a moment. A certain Atilius, of the freedman class, who had begun an amphitheatre at Fidena, in order to give a gladiatorial show, failed both to lay the foundation in solid ground and to secure the fastenings of the wooden structure above; the reason being that he had embarked on the enterprise, not from a superabundance of wealth nor to court the favours of his townsmen, but with an eye to sordid gain. The amateurs of such amusements, debarred from their pleasures under the reign of Tiberius, poured to the place, men and women, old and young, the stream swollen because the town lay near. This increased the gravity of the catastrophe, as the unwieldy fabric was packed when it collapsed, breaking inward or sagging outward, and precipitating and burying a vast crowd of human beings, intent on the spectacle or standing around. Those, indeed, whom the first moment of havoc had dashed to death, escaped torture, so far as was possible in such a fate: more to be pitied were those whose mutilated bodies life had not yet abandoned, who by day recognized their wives or their children by sight, and at night by their shrieks and moans. The news brought the absent to the scene — one lamenting a brother, one a kinsman, another his parents. Even those whose friends or relatives had left home for a different reason still felt the alarm, and, as it was not yet known whom the catastrophe had destroyed, the uncertainty gave wider range for fear.​
​
When the fallen materials came to be removed, the watchers rushed to their dead, embracing them, kissing them, not rarely quarrelling over them, in cases where the features had been obliterated but a parity of form or age had led to mistaken identification. Fifty thousand persons were maimed or crushed to death in the disaster; and for the future it was provided by a decree of the senate that no one with a fortune less than four hundred thousand sesterces should present a gladiatorial display, and that no amphitheatre was to be built except on ground of tried solidity. Atilius was driven into banishment. It remains to be said that, on the morrow of the accident, the great houses were thrown open; dressings and doctors were supplied to all comers; and Rome throughout those days, however tragic her aspect, yet offered a parallel to the practice of the ancients, who were accustomed, after a stricken field, to relieve the wounded by their liberality and their care.​

--Tacitus, Annals IV, 62-63.

'Fifty thousand' is best read as 'a hell of a lot', of course, but still.

The collapse of Circus Maximus wooden bleachers (the cheapest seats) that happened during the reign of Antoninus Pius was reported as having caused 1,112 deaths, which seems more probable.
 
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Marcius said:
It remains to be said that, on the morrow of the accident, the great houses were thrown open; dressings and doctors were supplied to all comers; and Rome throughout those days, however tragic her aspect, yet offered a parallel to the practice of the ancients, who were accustomed, after a stricken field, to relieve the wounded by their liberality and their care.​

--Tacitus, Annals IV, 62-63.
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The Romans didn’t skimp on disaster relief. Nero himself did a good job providing for the poor sods who were burned out by the fire he’s supposed to have fiddled through.
 
The Romans weren't the only great road builders of the ancient world. It turns out that, at about the same time, the Mayans were building hundreds of miles of roads called sacbe connecting their cities. Like the Romans they used a multilayered construction. But, unlike the Romans, they had to cut their roads through jungles and swamps and did it all without iron tools.
http://www.theoldexplorer.com/index.php/maya-technology/sacbeob
labna_sacbe.jpg
It goes to show that ingenuity and invention are not confined to one culture or time. Humans separated by thousands of miles can come up with similar solutions to similar problems.
 
Marcius said:
One can imagine a parallel universe where Ancient Rome lived to see another millennium and brought the cross to the New World -- but not in the way Isabella and Ferdinand meant it.
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I often have. So have alternate history SF writers. In Roma Eterna

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_Eterna

the Imperium sends a mighty fleet to conquer what in our timeline is called "Central America." And get their invincible asses kicked by Mayans and what in our timeline is called a "category 5 hurricane."
 
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