Question

Which of the following represents a technological advancement brought about by the Byzantine Empire?

the construction of monastic libraries

the construction of triumphal arches in the Milion

the construction of a hippodrome

the construction of an aqueduct

Answer 1

None of these strike me as real plausible, but I would probably go with the first, which at least has the virtue of largely occuring during the Byzantine era, although I don't recall the Byzantine emperors helping build those libraries, so I wouldn't say the Empire brought them about. They would have been built with or without the Empire's existence.

But arches were well known to Classical Rome, as were hippodromes and aqueducts, so none of these can represent advances even during the Byzantines, let alone due to their efforts.

And at that, I'm having a hard time seeing the construction of a library as a "technological" advance. It may be a social advance, putting all that knowledge in one convenient place, but it is not a change in the tools we have available with which to manipulate the environment -- a machine, technique, body of new knowledge -- which is what I would call a "technological" advance.