Re ancient Roman chariot and wagon wheels, do we have any idea how much life in terms of miles of use they would typically give before needing to be replaced?
Wouldn’t many designs of wheels have been repaired and refitted, rather than replaced? Better to replace a spoke here and there, and maybe reshoe the rims, than have to build whole new wheels.
Yeah I should say before needing to be “repaired”. I realize there is no specific answer I’m just looking for a range of how much use you can get out of wooden structure wheels. I’m kind of wondering did they give tens or hundreds of miles of use or more before needing major servicing, assuming they were not damaged by accident.
I’m not aware of any long-term experiments done on replicas of Roman chariots, nor of ancient literary sources giving such detail as asked by the OP. But I’m certain the range gotten out of a typical chariot wheel was way beyond tens of miles. Wheel technology had been under constant progress for 2000+ years by the time of the Romans. Wagon wheels expertly crafted out of quality oak and fitted with an iron rim were not exactly delicate.
Some of Roman technology didn’t differ all that much from much later pre-industrial technology (I’m thinking tool and weapon construction etc.). I wonder if some sources from the 1800’s had data on wooden wagon wheel mileage? Certainly not applicable as such to Roman times, but worse analogies have been put forth.
If it’s Theseus’ chariot, the wheels last forever.
There’s not going to be a useful answer to your question, since a wagon wheel used on roads would last much, much longer than a wagon wheel driven offroad into the brush. But Roman wheel and wagon technology was not reachieved until the 1700s; so if you were looking for hard statistics I’d imagine the whatever numbers you can coax out of say, 1800, would give you a good idea of what the Romans were getting from their wheels.
Observe that a racing chariot would have a much shorter life than a farm cart. Racing chariots (and war chariots) would be made as light as possible, and would have been hung up when not in use (as sulkies often still are) so that the wheels didn’t get flat.
I have no idea what I was doing when this thread from 2011 came up.
It was lamentably left unanswered the first time, but the typical Roman chariot was only warrantied to last 450,000 pedes, unless you bought the extended service contract.