Tales from the Dawn

[Enkidoh]

The only special aspects of the Ancients was they were ageless (but not immortal, they could still die, just not from old age), and had the power of creation magic which, really, was simply due to having enormous natural reserves of aether in their bodies. That was the sum of their 'special' nature. They however still had a tendency to all too mortal human failings of pettiness, jealousy, depression and anger.

Also, their civilization was already showing the first cracks of turning into staid decadence even before Hermes had his emotional breakdown and created the Metia to send his cursed question to the cosmos - many of the researchers in Elpis lamented at a general waning of creativity in both the concepts they were testing and even their own ideas for things like concept names - leading to people just copying each other's ideas and passing it off as 'new' with little change, shown with the 'fad' for shark concepts that Hythlodaeus mentioned (even though it was done for a quick joke, it actually hinted at something far more rotten in Ancient society that led back to the core of the expansion's theme). And even Hermes himself stated outright that they were frustratingly reaching the limit of what could be achieved with aether manipulation and Creation Magic - which is why he studied Dynamis in the first place.

And there were hints that ancient Etheriys wasn't actually the paradise it was made out to be, that things like war and disease did exist, it was just shoved under the rug with the use of Creation Magic relied on to solve such problems. All Venat did was take mankind's blinders off, in the most harshest way, but I digress.