Well, the one thing that must be considered, besides the relative perspective of less sophisticated contemporaries looking at these ancient and classical civilizations, is the shear level of slavery, brutality, cruelty and so forth that characterized those societies. In these very common regards, they are more on a par with the forces of Sauron.
The Roman Coliseum might only have compared with Numenor prior to its downfall.
Although the contrast among the Dunedain and Men of Darkness or Wild makes one think of the relative achievements of Rome, Hellas and the Great Near Eastern Cultures from a distinctively non-barbarian point of view, JRRT was patterning off of something that never really existed.
His high societies were distinctively late medieval or even post-medieval/pre-industrial in many ways. At a cultural level, however, he was going for a mixture of Iron Age European valour and natural nobility (sans Paganistic fear and bloodlust), in combination with early Christian piety, literacy and Culture (with a big "C" which had survived from the late Roman period).
In a relatively humane sense, this sort of amagalmation did to some extent flourish in the British Isles prior to the Vikings, but especially pre-Norman, among Tuetons, Celts and pre-Celtic groups.
JRRT's orignal inspiration was to recapture something of what he considered to have been lost in the aftermath of 1066.
Even our caricature of the Vikings is really a Norman invention. Less the naval technology, organization and commercial savvy, the Vikings and Varangians were more comparable to the Beornings, Bardings and Eorlingas, who had a somewhat Sarmathian-like Horse-based culture, with very much the values and ethos of the Anglian tribes.
The Men of the Wild or Darkness, and the heathen kings that Gandalf mentions, really correspond to how Christian would see many who did not know the Light of Christ, and thus, who live with an oppressing and corrupting fear of death. This was probably no less true of the ancient afterlife-obsessed Egyptians, mystical, epicurian and cynical Greeks, and bloody-minded Romans.
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The hoes unrecked in the fields were flung, __ and fallen ladders in the long grass lay __ of the lush orchards; every tree there turned __ its tangled head and eyed them secretly, __ and the ears listened of the nodding grasses; __ though noontide glowed on land and leaf, __ their limbs were chilled.
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