The Greek, Hellenistic and Roman worlds were characterized by a culture of knowledge that fostered and celebrated innovation and invention. Greeks and Romans not only embraced technological practices developed elsewhere in earlier periods, maximizing their use, but also saw the diffusion of a broad range of inventions and innovations in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, transport, and communication. These innovations not only had a tangible impact on everyday material culture, but also supported the increasingly complex social, economic and political networks that came to characterize the ancient Mediterranean.
Graeco-Roman antiquity was a pre-industrial and agrarian society. It had limited means to circulate knowledge, and there were structural constraints on the emergence and diffusion of innovations compared to the early modern and modern world. At the same time, the Graeco-Roman world grew into an increasingly vast and complex conglomerate of social, political, and economic networks that facilitated (and fostered) innovation more than ever before, which resulted in significant change in technological practice and a well-developed consumer culture in which invention and knowledge could be appreciated and celebrated.