Common errors about Antiquity

[SigniferOne]

Your comment does remind me of another common myth or at least an incorrect attribution in agricultural history. Despite their demand for cereal grains, The Romans neither invented nor popularly adopted the harvester aka "vallus". Pliny the Elder wrote about it, but it was Gallo-Belgic not Roman in use and origin. Like with the wheelbarrow, despite their reputation as great assimilators of technology, they may have known of yet failed to adopt labor saving technologies. I'm not sure that the availability of slave labor is an adequate explanation.

Are you representing this view as a myth? It wasn't clear what you meant to say there.

But anyway, how do we know that the Romans never popularly adopted the Vallus? Nobody knew that Romans had humongous water-powered machines at Arles either, or similarly enormous water-powered machinery in mines (Wilson, Machines, Power, and the Ancient Economy), until we found them. Vast large-scale machine industry is not exactly our first image of Romans that springs to mind, yet that has little relevance as to what actually happened or not.