 We might nonetheless wonder whether Cotta can compartmentalise things so straightforwardly as to be governed by tradition from the point of view of his religious and Roman identity, and by reason when it comes to philosophical discourse. Here Cotta’s implication that he is not a philosopher perhaps recognises something crucial about the nature of reason. The problem is not exactly that one might have different approaches in different contexts; in principle, that might be a perfectly sensible way to proceed. It is, rather, that if one demonstrates by reason that, for example, the gods do not exist, then the gods do not exist. Reason is not a compartment in which one can store a certain set of beliefs or conclusions that need not carry over to other areas of one’s life. It is an integral part of the claim of reason that its claim is a universal one.