Lack of technological progress in late Roman Empire

[Nathan Ross]

It's rather frustrating, and Pliny's compliance with the conspiracy certainly doesn't help.

Certainly not - but might not the Romans themselves have started the 'conspiracy' in the first place? The idea of the Roman Genius as inherently practical, adapted for governance, law, administration and military affairs, as opposed to the flighty arty Greeks, whose creative genius was harnessed and commanded by Rome, seems to accord so fully with the Roman self-image that I'm sure they did all they could to propagate it. Roman culture - upper-class culture, at any rate, senatorial or imperial - seems to have actively looked down on the creative arts (aside from poetry, of course) as somewhat undignified - remember Cicero lambasting Verres for lurking in his metalwork shop 'like a Greek'. The same, perhaps, goes for technological advances - the cultured Roman, from Cicero to Vegetius, affected to despise innovation of all sorts and long for the glories of the past; easy then to ascribe what innovation did occur to the work, or the influence, of the subjegated Greeks...

- Nathan