Materials Science in Ancient Rome - by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna

Introduction

The American Chemical Society defines the Materials Science as an applied science studying the relationship between the structure and properties of materials. "Chemists who work in the field study how different combinations of molecules and materials result in different properties. They use this knowledge to synthesize new materials with special properties". This is what the Society writes in one of its web pages, also remarking that this science has a strong increasing impact on our society [1]. In fact, the Materials Science is an interdisciplinary field which, besides chemists, involves several researchers, mainly physicists and engineers, engaged to study the properties of matter, ranging from theoretical studies to technological applications, from the atomic scales to the macroscopic structures. Since the interest of media is strongly attracted by nanoscience and nanotechnology, which are the most recent research fields of Materials Science, we have a tendency to forget that this science had always accompanied our life from quite ancient times. Nanoscience is its last development.

Science is coming from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge" [2], and then, if we want to find the Materials Science in the past, we need to investigate its "knowledge of materials". Let us then try to analyse the case of Ancient Rome. There are several studies on the roman technology (a quite impressive list is reported in Ref.3): my aim is to propose a research on available ancient texts of those parts which are devoted to the knowledge of materials. Of course, this is a huge task, needing help from scholars working on ancient Greek and Latin sources. Nevertheless, an initial investigation is possible on the books of Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder [4], giving quite interesting results.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio lived in the 1st century BC. He was a Roman architect and engineer, best known as the author of the "De Architectura" [5]. Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, died on 25 August, 79 AD during the eruption of Mount Vesusius. He was a Roman naturalist as well as naval commander of the Roman Empire. He wrote an encyclopaedic work, the "Naturalis Historia" [6]. These two books give us a portrait of the knowledge in Rome, at the beginning of the Empire, and deserve a longer study. For instance, the "Naturalis Historia" contains several detailed descriptions of metals, pigments and precious stones. Here, I am reporting some contents that we can find in these books, which attracted my personal interest. In the following, the reader will find the discussion organized in some case studies on concretes, coatings, amorphous materials and colloidal crystals, to define them in modern words.