This fascinating article goes into more detail on the reasons why: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.b

This fascinating article goes into more detail on the reasons why: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus... They correctly dismissed it as a curiosity because it was far too inefficient to do anything useful with the amounts of fuel they would have had available. They couldn't have made a more efficient one because they didn't have any idea how to construct reasonably uniform pressure-bearing cylinders. Real innovation didn't happen until much later on, at British coal mines because 1. there was lots of fuel because it's already at a coal mine, 2. there was a useful task for the work in pumping water out of the mine, and 3. materials technology had advanced enough to make it possible to construct an engine that did a useful amount of work from a manageable amount of fuel.