cultivation of the higher intellectual faculties. It was left for
philosophy to fill these blanks as best it could. Unlike the Greeks,
the Romans, great as they were in law-making and administration, had
little natural gift or taste for abstract thought. All the philosophic
sects had been founded and continued by Greeks, and it was still to
the Greek half of the empire that the contemporary world looked for
the best schools and teachers of philosophy. The genuine Roman spirit
at all times felt some mistrust of such studies, especially if they
tended to carry the student away from practical life into the "shade"
and the "corner," or if they tended to subvert the traditional notions
of "duty" as inculcated by Roman law, Roman custom, and the religion
of the state. Nevertheless, not only did many Romans, even of mature
years, resort to the philosophic "Universities" of the time, but
wealthy houses often maintained a domestic philosopher, whose business
it was to supply moral teaching and intellectual companionship to his
employer. Some, indeed, preferred merely a _savant_, who might "post"
them with information concerning Greek writers, explain difficulties,
and act in general as a literary _vade mecum_. In many cases, if not
in most, the Roman aristocrat or plutocrat treated such a retainer as
a social inferior.

The Roman attitude towards thought and learning too often reminds one
of a certain modern type which has been irreverently described as
being "death on culture." While the Greek and graecized oriental loved
research, discussion, dialectics, ethical and scientific conversation,
and literary coteries for their own sake, the Roman more commonly
regarded such things as means for sharpening his abilities and for
imparting distinction in social intercourse. Doubtless there were, and
had been, exceptions. No Greek philosopher could be more in earnest
than Lucretius, the Roman poet of the later republic, and doubtless
there were no few Romans unknown to fame who both grappled seriously
with Greek philosophy and also endeavoured to carry it religiously
into practice. Yet for the most part the Roman, even when he is a
writer upon such subjects, carries with him the unmistakable air of
the amateur or the dilettante. In reading Seneca, as in reading
Cicero, we feel that we are dealing with an able man possessed of an
excellent gift for popular exposition or essay-writing, but hardly
with a man of original philosophic endeavo