re: Everyone agrees the ancient Romans were the greatest ancient civilization....

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They were great at taking things others invented

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As a very early example of this, in the Punic Wars that pitted the Romans against the Carthaginians, the Romans had a decided advantage hand-to-hand, but a huge disadvantage at sea.

So they copied the build of a Carthaginian warship, built an entire fleet of them, and added a corvus to each, which was a huge swinging bridge with a spike on the end.

Knowing they couldn't outsail their opponent, they would instead pull-up alongside, deploy the bridge, and invade their ship where they could then regain a combat advantage.

It didn't win the war by itself, but this ability to quickly copy what was available to them helped the Romans to ultimately conquer the Carthage empire, which was perhaps the dominant power of the region. (Without this victory, the Romans probably never become a superpower.)

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.