Welcome back. As we saw in the first half of this two-part series,
the Roman Empire seemed – at a cursory glance – to be primed for industrialization.
Trade flourished, consumer goods were produced in unprecedented quantities, and scholars tinkered
with steam-powered devices. Yet nothing like the industrial revolution that transformed
eighteenth-century Britain ever took place. Technological change, as we’ll see, does not occur
spontaneously when a society reaches a certain level of prosperity and technical knowledge.
It needs to be stimulated by a clear need or opportunity.
Lacking that, and lacking entrepreneurs motivated to invest in new technologies,
the Romans were never destined for an industrial revolution, televised or otherwise.
Take, for example, Hero of Alexandria’s famous aeolipile. As discussed in the first video, this
was a primitive turbine, featuring a hollow metal sphere spun by steam escaping from two angled
vents. The aeolipile was too inefficient to ever be developed into a practical power source – which
is hardly surprising, since there is no evidence that Hero intended it to be anything of the sort.
Had he wanted to create a steam engine, Hero likely could have done so.
It simply never occurred to him that such a device would be worth making.
Hero was a product of a society in which technological innovation – though sometimes
welcome, at least when it offered the elite ways to make more money – had a
limited place. The Ptolemies had supported a few mechanically-inclined scholars at the Library of
Alexandria, and one of them – the brilliant Ctesibius – had rewarded their patronage by
inventing the force-pump, the hydraulic organ, and the first accurate water clock. This sort of
state-financed research and development, however, was virtually non-existent in the Roman world.
Most members of the Roman elite saw no reason to encourage mechanical experimentation.
They tended, like the Greeks before them, to regard such things as
unworthy of an educated gentleman’s attention – what Plato and Aristotle had called “banausic.”
This disdain is neatly summarized in the passage from Seneca excerpted onscreen:
“We know that certain devices have been invented within our own memory – such as windows which
admit clear light through transparent panes, and vaulted baths with pipes let into their walls
for the purpose of diffusing heat…All this sort of thing has been devised by the lowest grade
of slaves. Wisdom's seat is higher; she trains not the hands, but is mistress of our minds.”
Although such snobbery was far from universal, it reflected what seems to have been a generally
cautious attitude toward innovation. According to an anecdote repeated by several ancient authors,
the emperor Tiberius destroyed the workshop of a craftsman who developed a flexible form of glass,
fearing that it would reduce the value of gold and silver. Vespasian, likewise, was said to have once
rejected a new device for lifting columns, since he wanted to keep the Roman commoners employed.
Although it’s unlikely that either story has basis in fact, both are characteristic
of a culture that did not necessarily regard technological progress as positive.
In addition, thanks to poor communications, a machine or method developed in one part of the
empire had no guarantee of reaching the rest of the Roman world. The famous Antikythera Mechanism,
an elaborate astronomical clock sometimes described as the first analogue computer, is the
only device of its kind ever discovered. Knowledge of how to create machines like it was probably
limited to a small circle of craftsmen on the island of Rhodes, and never spread beyond them.
On the theoretical side, a serious impediment was the nature of
Greco-Roman higher education, which emphasized the practice of rhetoric
and close reading of classical texts. The conservative nature of this training
encouraged those few students who contrived to be interested in mechanics and the physical sciences
to refine the work of their great predecessors instead of pioneering new lines of research.
More fundamentally, even if Greco-Roman culture had privileged technological innovation, there
was no economic incentive to pursue anything like the industrial ventures that transformed Britain
in the eighteenth century. This is not the place to enter the ongoing academic debate over the
nature of the Roman economy, which centers on how the “embeddedness” of economic activity in
ancient social structures and attitudes. For our purposes, it matters only that the Roman economy,
despite considerable sophistication in certain respects, was underdeveloped.
Most of the population lived near the subsistence level, and the vast majority of all wealth was
held by a small landed aristocracy. Commerce was mostly localized; industry, mostly small-scale.
The British Industrial Revolution was initially stimulated by the cotton textile industry,
which awarded spectacular profits to entrepreneurs who pursued the most efficient methods of
mass-producing cloth. Those profits were made possible by a large international market,
and by financial institutions that facilitated large-scale investment in new technologies.
Nothing in the Roman economy enabled or repaid such investment.
As we’ve seen, there were a few examples of what could be called mass production in the Roman
world. But these were exceptional, for the simple reason that the Roman market for mass-produced
consumer goods was vastly smaller than the global market that made British cotton cloth
so profitable in the late eighteenth century. The majority of Romans, after all, were poor
farmers with little disposable income. And in any case, the difficulties and expense of transport
made marketing manufactured goods cost-ineffective almost anywhere outside a major city.
Even if there had been a more promising market for mass-produced manufactures, the Roman world lacked
a class of entrepreneurs ready to exploit it. The Roman elite sometimes invested in industrial
enterprises, such as the brickyards that many landowners around Rome established on their
estates. These, however, invariably produced basic and inexpensive goods that did not drive
technological innovation. Nor did they create a separate entrepreneurial class, since the slaves
and contractors who managed them had to surrender most of their profits to aristocratic owners.
In any case, the Roman elite’s participation in manufacturing was always limited and
opportunistic. Wealthy men preferred to invest in land – the ancient world’s most reliable
asset – or in some combination of money-lending and luxury commerce, which were far more lucrative
than any manufacturing enterprise known to the Romans. And instead of re-investing their profits
in business ventures, they tended to pour them into lavish villas, extravagant banquets,
and other forms of conspicuous consumption. Although there were prosperous merchants and
freedmen outside the traditional aristocracy, these outsiders never formed a distinct group,
and the wealthiest among them imitated the attitudes and investing habits of the elite.
Unlike eighteenth-century Britain, in short, the Roman world had neither a class of entrepreneurs
ready to invest in innovative technologies nor any industry that rewarded such investment. British
society had been primed for industrialization by a host of factors – ranging from a history
of coal mining to a growing population of landless agricultural workers – but
the critical catalyst was the emergence of the cotton textile industry, which offered profits
on a scale that drove generations of investors into a frenzy of competition and innovation.
Nothing remotely comparable existed in ancient Rome.
Although we have been conditioned to expect it, technological advance is not inevitable.
One invention does not necessarily beget another, and regression is as natural as progress.
Nor is technological advance the goal of every society. The Romans’ technologies
were perfectly adequate for their needs as they perceived them. Their failure to
industrialize was not a missed opportunity. In their eyes, there was no opportunity to miss.
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enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants. Thanks for watching.