this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Illustrations of history
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This magazine is for sharing artwork of historical events, places, personages, etc. Scale models and the like also welcome!
Generally speaking, actual photos of a historical item should go to !historyartifacts@lemmy.world
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even with modern technology it is hard for me to imagine how it's done... How did the romans do bridges like that?
A lot of timber piles would be driven into the river bed by pulling up and letting go of a giant boulder onto the top of the pile. Once the timber piles were set, they could then build a wooden bridge deck on top.
It wasn't a permanent bridge and the Romans would usually destroy their bridge after they no longer needed it.
Minor note: on campaigns in permanently hostile territory, yes, to deny the enemy a means of retaliation, but many wooden bridges served for hundreds of years in conquered territory after being constructed. Bridges were a great way of controlling and monitoring civilian traffic, after all!
Here's an animation of how it was done (in at least one case) in medieval times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJgD6gyi0Wk
I imagine Romans coulda done something similar for permanent stone bridges. The one in the illustration looks temporary.