[bluGill]

Historians have come up with a lot of theories. There is no way to answer for sure though. General thought is they didn't even try because they had slaves they could force to do the hard labor, so there was not point. England developed steam engines in a world where slaves didn't exist. The Romans (their blacksmith god was disabled) also didn't value technology as a society like England did, and so they mostly didn't try to develop technology (except as it related to winning wars - anyone who wins wars was a big deal)

However it isn't clear if the Romans could have developed the metals needed even if they tried. There are a lot of parts to better metal alloys that they didn't know and trial and error is a slow process when you don't have why something didn't work.

[bsder]

> The Romans (their blacksmith god was disabled) also didn't value technology

The Romans were engineers par excellence.

They worked both steel and glass in this time frame. Look at how they built Pompeii for the local conditions. They built the Colosseum with lead clamps and rebar to prevent it from collapsing with earthquakes (it eventually collapsed because everybody stole the valuable lead as Rome failed). Their art was better than anything produced until the Renaissance happened. I can go on and on ad nauseam.

Romans most certainly did not look down on engineering and technology.

[Leno1225]

England developed steam engines in an era where slaves were increasingly expensive and less socially acceptable than before and , contrarily, in an era where exploitation of the poor was still very normal and acceptable. Hephaestus/Vulcan was disabled, yes, but also was very powerful (governing volcanos and fire in Italy isn’t a weakling’s domain). They absolutely valued technology… to say otherwise is wild.

[LoveMortuus]

I wish even today, exploitation of the poor was not normal and acceptable.