Slaves. They had an Industrial Revolution, albeit one built on the backs of "biorobots." A large, double-digit percentage of the Roman population were slaves. If you exclude farmers (who were slaves to the land in a different sense), the vast majority of Romans were slaves. If you went to a market in Rome or Alexandria, you'd see slaves of various households buying groceries from enslaved shop vendors working for the landlord shop owner. Most of the people walking on the street were slaves.
Now imagine I got up to give a TED talk and told you my company perfected the humanoid robot, to such an extent that they were cheap to buy, perfectly able to understand and carry out instructions, self-replicating, needed only a little food and water as input, and able to develop highly toned skills? Can you imagine the productivity boost our society would experience?
Rome had that. Until Christianization slowly eradicated the institution of slavery, and the transition to serfdom. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution once again gave us (mechanical) slaves that progress took off.
Now imagine I got up to give a TED talk and told you my company perfected the humanoid robot, to such an extent that they were cheap to buy, perfectly able to understand and carry out instructions, self-replicating, needed only a little food and water as input, and able to develop highly toned skills? Can you imagine the productivity boost our society would experience?
Rome had that. Until Christianization slowly eradicated the institution of slavery, and the transition to serfdom. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution once again gave us (mechanical) slaves that progress took off.