This is quite good, though I disagree on one point:

> "FORGET...Progress"

I mean I completely agree, it's just for the modern reader infected with the victorian idea of "progress" (which has also polluted most people's understanding of how evolution works) this difference is even more profound.

There was a common belief in a largely static social order; why try for profound change? You can try to usurp the king, but that just shows that the old king was illegitimate, and anyway only certain people could get away with it.

But the other significant and related force was one of declinism: the romans had had a more advanced society (look at all their artifacts still around! Their literature!) and that, perhaps due to original sin, the then-current world was a less advanced society.