They never made an overwhelming shift to mathematical / science based civilization. They took over Syracuse with a mandate to keep Archimedes alive, but that failed. Some scholars say the only roman contribution to math was numerals.
Basically they reaped the profits of empire, and fell into the cargo cults of opulent success, abandoning the prior agricultural based common sense by never integrating new ideas in the Aristotelian domains except for to pay homage to the originating culture enough to collect taxes.
Not ready to drop a book on HN regarding the nuance of Roman evolution just yet.
While this is in part to be attributed to superstition and religion, this in turn was of material importance to navigation, aggriculture, and perhaps philosophy. Indeed, it is curious how those interrelated.
For one, nomads would need to know when it was time to move on, and where to.
There are a lot of loss and bottlenecks along that journey, though. And many notable locations, installations and individuals. The history of instrument-making and how it is intertwined with philosophical and religious views on the skies and the topology of the universe is quite fascinating (e.g. the motivations for observing the sky, being able to produce predictions at all, crafting models, etc).