CARMELO G.

MALACRINO

Constructing the Ancient World

Architectural Techniques of the Greeks and Romans

Translated by Jay Hyams

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Italian edition © 2010 Arsenale Editrice
Carmelo G. Malacrino, Photography
Andrea Darra, Editorial Coordinator
Fabrizio Tolu, Editorial direction
Linda Bovi, Layouts
Giancarlo Malagutti, Drawings (Except as noted below)
Carmelo G. Malacrino, Drawings, pp. 46, 50, 51 (below), 53–54,
78 (above), 79, 81, 84, 89 (below), 91, 94 (above, right), 110, 162 (below)

English translation © 2010 J. Paul Getty Trust

First published in English in 2010 by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Getty Publications
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500
Los Angeles, California 90049-1682
www.gettypublications.org

Pamela Heath, Production Coordinator

Jay Hyams, Translator
Mary Cason, Editor
Michael Shaw, Graphic Design and Typesetting
Kurt Hauser, Jacket and Binding Design
Translation, copyediting, and typesetting coordinated by LibriSource Inc.

Printed in Italy

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Malacrino, Carmelo G.
[Ingegneria dei Greci e dei Romani. English]
Constructing the ancient world : architectural techniques of the Greeks and
Romans / Carmelo G. Malacrino.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
First published in Italy in 2009 by Arsenale-Editrice, Verona.
ISBN 978-1-60606-016-2 (hardcover)
1. Building—Greece—History. 2. Architecture, Greek. 3. Building—Rome.
4. Architecture, Roman. I. Title.
TH16.M3513 2010
690.0938—dc22
2009045050

Cover. Remains of the Fountain of Glauke (foreground) and

the Temple of Apollo (background), Corinth, Greece. See page 8.
Contents

4 Introduction

7 Natural Building Materials:

Stone and Marble

41 Clay and Terracotta

61 Lime, Mortar, and Plaster

77 Construction Techniques in the Greek World

111 Construction Techniques in the Roman World

139 Engineering and Techniques at the Work Site

155 Ancient Hydraulics: Between Technology and Engineering

175 Heating Systems and Baths

187 Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels

208 Glossary
210 Bibliography
2 13 Index
 Introduction
E
ngineering and construction methods,
architecture and technical expertise.
These were the fields of knowledge that
comprised the primary skills incarnated in the
figure of the architect in the ancient world. In
the first century a.d., Vitruvius in his treatise
De Re Edificatoria (On Architecture) wrote of
architecture as a science, one that depended
“upon many disciplines and various appren-
ticeships which are carried out in other arts”
(1.1.1). The activities of an architect were dis-
tinguished by craftsmanship, a “continued and
familiar practice, which is carried out by the
hands in such material as is necessary for the
purpose of a design,” and technology, which
“sets forth and explains things wrought in
accordance with technical skill and method.”
The architect also must be literate and well
educated (1.1.4–10):
An architect must be a man of letters
that he may keep a record of useful prec-
edents. By his skill in draftsmanship he
will find it easy by colored drawings to
represent the effect desired. Mathemat-
ics again furnishes many resources to
architecture. It teaches the use of rule and
compass and thus facilitates the laying out
of buildings on their sites. . . . By optics,
in buildings, lighting is duly drawn from
certain aspects of the sky. By arithmetic,
the cost of building is summed up; the
methods of mensuration are indicated.
. . . Architects ought to be familiar with
4 INTRODUCTION
history because in their works they often
design many ornaments about which they
ought to render an account to inquirers.
. . . Philosophy . . . makes the architect
high-minded, so that he should not be
arrogant but rather urbane, fair-minded,
loyal, and what is most important, with-
out avarice. . . . A man must know music
that he may have acquired the acoustic
and mathematical relations. . . . He must
know the art of medicine in its relation
to the regions of the earth . . . and to the
characters of the atmosphere.
This book is dedicated to these and other
aspects of the ancient ars edificatoria, an art
that called upon various disciplines and appli-
cations, and involved not only the architect
and other members of the work site but all
of society. From the city officials who com-
missioned a great public work to the priests
in need of a suitable structure for the perfor-
mance of rituals in a sacred area to the com-
mon people who made homes in which to live
and perform their daily activities, construc-
tion involved every social class. It is no acci-
dent that architectural remains are the most
important archaeological sources handed
down to us by antiquity.
While traveling one often overhears excla-
mations of wonder from visitors who are
impressed by the monumentality of Greek
and Roman structures, along with incredu-
lous queries as to how such works could have
been achieved without the kinds of machines
we have today. Such observations were in part
responsible for my decision to write a book
on those very themes, in a text accessible to
the wider public, especially nonspecialists.
Straightforward language and clear definitions
of both ancient and modern terminology are
accompanied by a selection of illustrations
that, it is hoped, will engage the reader in the
subject, and show not only details of the tech-
nical methods discussed but also the broader
background for the works examined. Special
attention has been given to ancient sources
(literary, epigraphic, and iconographic), as
they represent the irreplaceable testimony
handed down to us by direct participants in
the construction of ancient architecture.
The book begins with a section on con-
struction materials, specifically the stones and
marbles used in the Greek and Roman worlds.
Their identification, uses in architecture, and
quarries, as well as techniques of working
them, are presented within their geographical
and historical context, including the economic
and social systems that shaped the use of and
commerce in stone materials. Clay, one of the
first raw materials used by humans, is among
the most versatile offered by nature, and was
used in architecture both as the principal com-
ponent in “unbaked” mixtures and as the base
for products fired in kilns. The subsequent use
of lime, mortar, and plaster led to the creation
of structures that are still standing after more
than two millennia.
The theme of construction technology
occupies the central part of the book. For the
sake of simplicity it is divided into separate
chapters on the Greek and the Roman worlds,
although references to comparisons, parallels,
and influences appear throughout.
The final chapters are dedicated to the
more complex technical aspects of construc-
tion, including the transportation and instal-
lation of architectural elements, as well as
heating systems, roads, bridges, and tunnels.
The reader will soon discover that, given
the title of the book, the discussion could eas-
ily have been expanded to include many other
subjects, such as pumping systems and meth-
ods applied in the field of military engineer-
ing. But the decision was made to concentrate
on the techniques of ancient building and
engineering that were most closely related
to the sphere of architecture, and to provide
a panorama of examples, at the same time
broad and detailed. As the topics considered
are certain to arouse interest in further infor-
mation, a bibliography, divided by more nar-
rowly defined subject areas, has been included.
Indeed, the purpose of this book is to intro-
duce the reader to themes and issues that,
despite their intrinsic fascination, have largely
remained the privileged domain of special-
ists. These subjects, however, relate to some of
the most ingenious solutions devised by the
ancient world to resolve the very problems
that today we are able to confront only with
the help of industrial machines.
INTRODUCTION 5