Nitpick: Steam power was already known at roman times - they just didn't put much effort in developing it, because they had lots of slaves doing their work. Besides, they probably didn't have the skill in metallurgy and precision manufacturing to build industrialisation-style engines anyway.
If you just look at it in terms of "good ideas", very little happened after the end of the ancient greek up until industrialisation. But they got a lot better in doing the stuff they already knew, allowing all those good ideas to be useful.