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About 544 BC the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) falls under the domination of princely families of Indo-European origin, coming from Maghada. The Ceylonese civilization develops markedly after the conversion of the island to Buddhism. This conversion is attributed to a certain Mahendra who, according to tradition, is said to be the son or the […]

Agriculture is the foundation of the economy of India, and consequently the practice of irrigation is widespread. In the above introduction, we have tried to give some idea of the broad cultural mixing that took place in this country. Because of this mixing, com­bined with India’s traditional lack of interest in its own history and […]

Beyond the Roman Empire — Persia and India Between the Tigris, the Ganges, and the Oxus: multicultural influ­ences The Indus valley had harbored the great “hydraulic” civilization of Harappa between the third and second millenia BC. This civilization would develop to have exchanges with the Mesopotamian millenia, and had extended its influence along the “lapis-lazuli […]

An observer of the vast array of Roman technical achievements can only be surprised and disappointed at the lack of technical documentation left by the Romans. With the exception of Vitruvius, whose technical descriptions are sometimes precise (the water mill), and sometimes extremely vague (the aqueducts), there is simply no body of tech­nical literature as […]

We should not forget the role of the port of Alexandria during the Roman period, as it closely follows the Ostia complex in importance. The port was built in the Hellenistic period, and we have already described it at the beginning of Chapter 5 (Figure 5.2). A squadron of Roman warships is based at the […]

Rome’s food supply depends on the chain of maritime transport of wheat from Numidia and Egypt. For a long time Rome could offer only minimal port facilities to cumber­some and large loaded boats needing to enter the Tiber at Ostia. Mooring there was especially dangerous when the Auster, an ill-reputed west wind today called the […]

Under the Republic, the Roman provinces were resources to be exploited for the sole benefit of Italy. Later on, the emperors came to understand that the cohesion of the Empire depended on the prosperity of the provinces. As the 2nd and 3rd centuries of our era unfolded, the economic situation of the provinces flourished; a […]

During the last years of the Republic, Greece, Anatolia, Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and Cyrenaica had become Roman. This process began with the bequeathing of Pergamon to the Roman Republic, and was marked by Augustus’ taking possession of Egypt in 31 BC, and continuing through the tumult of the many wars during the last years of the […]

Lucius Septimus Severus was born at Leptis Magna, capital of Cyrenaica (today’s Libya), at the end of the 2nd century AD. After the death of the Emperor Commodius in 192 AD, Severus emerges victorious from the civil wars, and becomes emperor in his turn, founding the dynasty of the Severians. North Africa had already been […]

Spain and Portugal are lands of mines during the Roman period: gold in the northwest, copper and silver in the southwest, silver in the southeast. Quite a panoply of hydraulic machines are used to evacuate water from deep galleries in the peninsula’s Roman mines: Archimedes screws, Ctesibios pumps, water wheels. Water is also used to […]