In describing the education of a Roman youth, and also in setting forth the various religious attitudes of the time, mention has been made of the pursuit of philosophy. Religion supplied no real guide to moral conduct, and education provided little exercise for the 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.