 If so, then it is not simply a case of religion deferring to reason. Beliefs we hold without the legitimation of reason have a necessary place. The upshot seems to be that religious beliefs, insofar as they either are not or cannot be subject to rational defence, are more representative than one might have supposed of the beliefs we hold more generally. In this regard, On the Nature of the Gods is not uncharacteristic of Cicero’s whole approach to philosophy: he uses his characters’ debates both to advertise the virtues of rational enquiry, and to suggest that those virtues reach right the way up, as perhaps they should, to the status of rational enquiry itself.