Salvete omnes
If I look at a philosophical dictionary (which my paper is feeding us with), the impression is given that Romans, contrary to the Greecs, did not indulge in philosophy because they found it was boring.
1) Rome produced few truly original philosophers, that's true, but neither did Greece after the 3rd century BC. Around that period, the 'field' got divided between Platonists, Aristoteleans, Stoics, Epicureans etc. Eclectics existed, but no philosopher really abandoned the established 'framework of thinking' that the mentioned doctrines shared. Telling is the fact that perhaps the only new philosophy to originate after the beginning of the Christian era was a "neo-style", Neoplatonism. A "philosopher with the hammer", as Nietzsche called himself, never appeared in the Greco-Roman world and, imo, perhaps never could appear in the 'philosophical field' I just described.
2) Rome knew very few professional philosophers. Most philosophy teachers in the Empire were Greeks, often liberated slaves. I think it
was simply contrary to the practical genius of the Romans to devote their lives entirely to philosophy, as most famous Greek philosophers did. I believe they didn't really regard philosophy as boring, but -as everything with them- it needed to serve a practical end. If it didn't, it was regarded as useless, or worse : dangerous. Carneades, who was a member of the first delegation of Greek philosophers to be sent from Athens in 155 BC, shocked Rome by arguing convincingly for one argument one day, and then refuting all his arguments the following day. Cato the Censor, not very sympathetic to this display of relativistic cleverness, immediately expelled them from Rome.
Cato's opponents, the Scipiones, were much more favourable to philosophy : the Stoic Panaetius was a prominent member of their cultural 'salon'. His adaptation of Stoicism, making it less antisocial and more ethical and pragmatic, would attract many of the Senatorial class in the late republic and further. The end-product of this evolution were figures like Cicero or Seneca, important statesmen who kept philosophy for their spare time (both also wrote extensively in their period of exile) and regarded it as a guide for both their personal and political lives.
Valete,
Atticus