What's "no technology", because ancient rome was full of giant wealth gaps. Maybe if you mean hunter-gatherer societies, but i don't really know enough about them to comment.
Similar huge fortunes are made any time more technology breaks out and scales better. That's what he means.
And, as Melting_Harps pointed out, weapons are a technology. And so is communication and methods of organizing a larger society.
Storing grain is a technology too. Even agriculture is a technology.
But now we have many more ways to do this. If I write an app and millions install and use it, I am multiplying the amount of work I can get done for people and what they are willing to pay for it.
Much better for them than threatening them with my army. Especially since I have been unable to find it. :-)
A poor, non-existing fanciful hypothetical argument that cannot stand on it's own, but is made to illustrate an ill-convinced point: because since the advent of anatomical Humans (~200k-300k) we see evidence of Man was using clubs or spears fashioned from wood, or arrowheads with the art in caves to go with it.
All of which fall under technology of some sort.
In short, its a poorly reasoned hypothetical to support one's own biases and perhaps disdain for tech and the inherent inequality that follows from those who benefit from it.
Of course, the same is true for modern society. Even so-called "tech entrepreneurs" like Elon Musk do much better at seeking profits than "leveraging technologies" -- as paying people to develop technologies isn't the same thing as leveraging them for increasing the productivity of oneself, at all.
However, of course, the argument is hardly surprising. After all, much of the ideology of modern capitalism rests on the ideal of the Iron Man, the genius inventor who, by his smartness (and benevolent white masculinity) embodies the excuse for the exploitation of the Earth's natural resources, for the creeping destruction of our democracy and the huge disparities in wealth and power that go along with it. You just have to believe this is real, otherwise all you ever learned from Coca Cola advertising would be wrong, at that is too painful to admit.
Not exactly.
Crassus amassed his fortune first through conquest, and then through real estate speculation. Caesar and Pompey's fortunes were a mixture of family wealth and the spoils of war.
There was certainly a class of wealthy Romans that derived their wealth -- and Rome's food supply! -- from land worked by slaves (mostly captured in war and brought in from all over Europe). But the wealthiest were, by far, the political-military ruling class, who accrued their wealth through bribes and conquest.
It was through gaining ownership of land and by capturing slaves.