by Aldus Marius on Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:21 am
Ave, mi Draco!
"Age of Empires, Age of Steam"...a delightful concept; I shall have to talk someone into writing a retro-SF novel by that name!
As far as your question itself, I know very little, but here it is...
The Greek mathematician Archimedes did a lot of engineering work for Carthage's defenses. He's said to have invented a whole host of machines, powered by various means, to make life for the Roman navy just a little more difficult than it was already. One of these machines was supposed to be able to lift an entire ship right out of the sea and dash it against the city's walls, or else drop it back down onto a rock. I think Archimedes was also the fellow who came up with the method of estimating an object's weight by how much water it displaced. That being the case, the ship-breaker might have involved a bit of early hydraulics.
If Rome ever got their hands on such a thing and ordered it destroyed, it was probably not as a threat to the slave trade (which was only just about to really warm up), but as a threat to national security. Nobody sane keeps a captured nuke as a souvenir!
Anyway, I'd begin a study of such things with Archimedes, and see where the link-farms took me from there. >({|:-)
(The Romans themselves were no strangers to steam either; remember the hypocaust.)
In amicitia et fide,
Aldus Marius Peregrinus.