[hyperman1]

I've read somewhere how the English people industrialized because they had problems that could not be fixed by human or animal power. Mines became too deep, pumping too hard. The ancient greek knew about steam engines, but had no use for them. The English did, in their mines. Necessity as mother of invention. Then machines freed us from hard labour and gave us free time.

[cyberax]

Greeks had toys that couldn't produce meaningful amounts of power. And they had no real ways to improve that.

[hyperman1]

This perfectly demonstrates the point: Before James Watt came along, neither had the English. Steam was unreliable, broke down a lot, killed people, and was only tolerated because it was the only game in town. This bothered society, so money became available so smart people could sit down and give it a solid theoretical basis.

The greek had plenty of smart people, but nobody bothered to assign them the unreliable steam problem. There are secondary problems like metallurgy, but smart people can work on them or find away around them, too.