Lack of technological progress in late Roman Empire

[Peroni]

Petronius described how: 'a flexible glass was invented, but the workshop of the inventor was completely destroyed by the Emperor Tiberius for fear that copper, silver and gold would lose value'.

Suetonius described how: 'An engineer devised a new machine which could haul large pillars at little expense. However the Emperor Vespasian rejected the invention and asked "who will take care of my poor?".'

It seems that the Romans had become so uncommercial that their rulers rejected increases in productivity. In such a world, advances in science were never going to be translated into technology. Interestingly, we can see that the government funding of ancient science was, in both economic and technological terms, a complete waste of money because the economy lacked the mechanism to exploit it.