It is remarkable that with all of today's technology and advances, there are still areas to be found where we have yet to match the engineering prowess of thousands of years old civilizations.
Obviously they came up with something good, and deserve credit. But to call that a triumph of Roman engineering over modern engineering? If I grew up in a land possessing an abundance of of nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur, would you proclaim how advanced my science was, if I came up with gunpowder?
Another example is Roman pottery. By sheer coincidence the clay they used was of exceptionally high quality (extremely fine particles, IIRC) so Roman pottery is extremely hard and durable, much harder and durable than we can make pottery today. Unfortunately, there was only one source of this clay (somewhere on the coast of Italy) and the Romans depleted it.