国家地理:The Coliseum 古罗马竞技场（在线收听） |
| The solution lay in three key architectural innovations that formed the secret of Rome's great monuments. The most important, is the arch. The arch is an almost perfect design for bearing heavy loads. And that design is so simple. A series of wedge-shaped blocks is assembled together in a semi-circular form, and supported on top of two pillars at the side. The weight of the building is absorbed by the key stone in the centre of the arch, and distributed evenly over the entire span of the arch and then down into these two side pillars. This allows the pillars to bear enormous loads. And because the space in between the pillars is empty, this reduces the weight of the building even further. The arch would become a reoccurring theme throughout the building of the Coliseum. On the outer ring, 80 gigantic arches, 23 feet high, form a giant ring around the perimeter. On top of these is set another 80 arches; on top of these, is a third tier, making 240 arches in all. The Coliseum really is nothing but arches; it's a symphony of arches. The organization required to achieve this feat of engineering was phenomenal. But even here, Rome's engineers had a trick or two up their togas. For them, building was a business of mass production. Standardization is key for the efficient building of the Coliseum. For example, the Romans used the arch, and the arch repeated again and again and again, by countless teams of builders and that kind of standardization is very akin to what we have in an industrialized world today. So the breaking-down of the building allows them to have lots of work gangs with not huge skills. They just had to simply build an arch. In this way, the thousands of laborers working on the Coliseum could be left to build their section with minimal supervision, confident in the knowledge that their labors were being repeated all over the structure. You are gonna have a lot of unskilled laborers, you are gonna have a lot of bricklayers, you are gonna have a lot of people that have some sort of skill, but they are not gonna be required to know more than a whole lot. Then you are gonna have a lot of skilled laborers, the people that are going to be carving the columns, the people that are going to be carving the statues that are gonna go in the niches in the upper floors. So you are gonna have a lot of skilled craftsmen, you are gonna have a lot of unskilled people participating in this very massive and important construction site. Just making sure that each working was in the right place at the right time, and doing the right thing, was a challenge itself. wedge: A piece of material, such as metal or wood, thick at one edge and tapered to a thin edge at the other for insertion in a narrow crevice, used for splitting, tightening, securing, or levering. 楔子 toga: A loose one-piece outer garment worn in public by male citizens in ancient Rome. 托加袍 |
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