To summarize my objections to your plan:

• Your goals of secrecy and widespread economic development are in direct conflict.
• You underestimate the time it would take to execute your plans.
• You underestimate the social opposition to your plans which would develop once you began making progress.

With this in mind:

Good. That means a stronger economy for me to work with. ... GOOD. That makes him my ally. In all likelihood I would probably be setting up client sub-patricians as a surrounding buffer to myself anyhow, and feeding them inferior versions of my technologies for them to work with.

Great, but then, why do you need all the death-watching rotating uber-guards ? Why not just make your technologies available at a reasonable cost ? You're going to be one step ahead of the competition no matter what, so what do you have to gain by keeping secrets ? Do these gains outstrip the productivity losses and potential PR disasters ?

They're also producing vastly more complicated products. And are training general assembly workers -- workers who can move freely from line-position to line-position. Using a vast array of modern tools in dynamic situations. Exactly the opposite of what I'd be doing.

I was under the impression that what you'd be doing is, training your smiths to crank out plow/rifle/air pump/aircraft parts to precise tolerances. This process would start by explaining to them the concept of "tolerances". This can be done, and it can be done relatively quickly, but not as quickly as you claim -- especially since, as you say, "there is a HUGE difference between "knowing about" a thing and "mastering" a thing". Every time I bring up the potential difficulties involved, you just assert your position more boldly. At this point, I need to see some evidence. This is why I asked you whether you personally ever tried to construct an air rifle, to which you replied:

The Giardoni air rifle is not "simple" to make by hand. While the metalsmiths of Rome frequently had the skillset necessary to achieve it, I myself do not.

Your character in this game we're playing would have the detailed schematics for the Giardoni air rifle memorized. Do you believe that, therefore, he would have not only the "skillset necessary to achieve it", but also the ability to teach it to average provincial smiths in Ancient Rome ? Or look at it in this way: you are not your character, but you have access to the Internet, so you don't need to memorize stuff. How long would it take you, today, using modern hand-operated tools, to manufacture a working Giardoni air rifle ?

There was no such thing as a centralized, powerful religious body in Rome. It didn't exist. "Priests" did not have political power in the Roman era.

No, they did not, but they had the power to excite a population, just like they do in any other era.

I would use them as power trains for wagons and to power ultralights.

Ok, so I guess I don't understand what you mean by "aeolipiles". Can you explain what an aeolipile drive for an ultralight, yet heavier-than-air craft would look like (or, preferably, link me to the relevant Wikipedia article) ? Or possibly I misunderstood what you meant by "ultralights"; perhaps you actually meant "lighter than air" ?

The geographical placement in mind was also designed to help suppress the dissemination of my technologies outside of my scope of influence.

In this case, where will you procure your raw materials, and what will you trade for them ? You can have isolation, or you can't have trade, but, historically, it has proven impossible to have both.