[jcrubino]

The Roman were truly a successful agrarian civilization, but became lackluster in progress from there.

They never made an overwhelming shift to mathematical / science based civilization. They took over Syracuse with a mandate to keep Archimedes alive, but that failed. Some scholars say the only roman contribution to math was numerals.

Basically they reaped the profits of empire, and fell into the cargo cults of opulent success, abandoning the prior agricultural based common sense by never integrating new ideas in the Aristotelian domains except for to pay homage to the originating culture enough to collect taxes.

[dragonelite]

You mean slave labor society right, if you can't expand the empire fast enough, you "human capital" stream dries up, its like taking on too much debt and not being able to keep up with paying.

[jcrubino]

I meant The Romans, started out as an agrarian culture where Ceasars were more interested in tending the farm than politics that evolved into the spectacle that Rome is now known for.

Not ready to drop a book on HN regarding the nuance of Roman evolution just yet.

[NoImmatureAdHom]

Everybody slaved. The Romans were just better at it (and most other things).

[marksbrown]

Other numeral systems existed before the Roman. Etruscan for instance.

[deek]

They dabbled in engineering as well

[jcrubino]

But killed Calculus with Archimedes.