Hero's steam engine triggers Greek industrial revolution?

[NapoleonXIV]

But isn't Damascus steel relent upon skilled blacksmith producing it in small quantities while using a specific type of iron ore that can only be obtained through Indian trade? An industrial revolution would need metallurgy advanced enough not only to produce high grade metals but high grade metals in large enough quantities to be put into wide scale use.

You don't need Damascus steel to make a boiler. And you don't need a high pressure boiler to make a steam engine. Watt's invention was an improvement on Newcomen's, which was a low pressure device IIRC. The upshot is that the metals aren't the crucial limitation IMO, they could be developed if necessary.

This subject has come up a lot, and the main argument quickly becomes a chicken/egg thing as to all that was necessary to make a steam engine/industrial revolution. My own candidate, and this has a lot of holes in it but I have heard it more than any other, is slavery. You simply didn't need to have labor saving devices when you had a surplus of labor.

Even then you have legitimate arguments that the only reason you had the labor surplus was because demand was so low and what changed this but new commercial arrangments?

I dunno, this makes it a pretty good 'real' POD, IMO, an actual point in history where things really could have been very different if different things has happened.