Cicero to Atticus, written from the Arpinate estate on or about the eighth or seventh day before the Kalends of Quintilis 709 AUC — 24 or 25 June 45 BC. The Perseus dateline is OCR-garbled (Scr.\ in Arpinati vh i K.\ Quint.\ a.\ 709 (45)); the surrounding sequence is fixed — 23 June (13.11), 26 June (13.13) — and the corruption is best read as viii K.\ Quint. (24 June) or vii K.\ Quint. (25 June). Section 4 itself fixes the auction date as a.\ d.\ viii Kal.\ Quint. (24 June), and Cicero says “they thought I’d be at Rome or the Tusculanum then,” which reads more naturally if the letter is written a day later than the auction notice. (The works.yaml entry currently carries the invalid date -0045-06-31 for this letter; flagged for PM correction to 24 or 25 June.)

The letter’s interest is concentrated in section 3, the celebrated dedication-shuffle of the Academica. Cicero had drafted the dialogue with Catulus and Lucullus as interlocutors — “high-born men, but no [Greek: philologoi]” — and is now, at Atticus’ prompting, transferring the dedication to Varro, whose Antiochean sympathies suit the dialogue’s doctrine. The two-year wait on Varro’s own promised [Greek: prosphonesin] is glossed by the Callippides image (the Aristophanic figure who runs ceaselessly without progressing a cubit) and a tag of Hesiod, Works and Days 350: [Greek: auto to metro kai ai ke dunai] — “in the same measure, if you can.” The De Finibus [Greek: peri Telon syntaxin] has meanwhile been promised to Brutus. Section 1 hides a private grief — Attica’s illness — behind the formula of the consolation that consoles its consoler. Section 2 acknowledges Atticus’ role as Cicero’s publisher: the Pro Ligario, finished a few weeks earlier, has sold well, and Cicero promises to deliver his future writing to him as praeconium, his auctioneer’s crier. Section 4 turns to the Brinnius inheritance and the Scapulan gardens, the property-search that has been running since 13.07–08.