[involans]

If anything ideology was more pervasive than now. People back then did not see themselves as playthings of chance, or subject to random chance - they, like now, actively debated courses of action and took charge of their life. Read the Philippics or Thucydides or Cicero for evidence of people who thought they could make their own decisions.

If anything Roman society was more committed to ideological explanations of the world; since Livy they attempted to understand their dominance as evidence of their particular manifest destiny and innate qualities. Internal politics were equally marked by ideological distinctions between the optimates and the populares. The Gracchi brothers are good examples of politicians who tied their careers closely to ideology.

The alternative to ideology is naturalistic and mechanistic explanation - and that was something ancient society almost completely lacked. There were no economic theories of development, no theories of international relations, no sociology. I would suggest that Romans understood their ascendency in almost completely ideological terms.