Cicero to Atticus, written from the Arpinate estate on the sixth day before the Kalends of Quintilis 709 AUC — 26 June 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Arpinati vi K.\ Quint.\ a.\ 709 (45)). This is the working sequel to 13.12: the decision to transfer the Academica from Catulus and Lucullus to Varro is now carried out, and in the same stroke Cicero has expanded the dialogue from two books to four. The pride is open — “in this kind of writing not even among the Greeks is there anything like them” — and is at once checked by a glance at his own [Greek: philautia], the standing self-love of all authors. The copies Atticus’ scribes have already made of the two-book version, Cicero notes, are now wasted; the new redaction will replace them.

The Greek is heavy and characteristic. [Greek: zelotypeisthai] “to be the object of jealousy” carries a private joke that the “unless perhaps Brutus” aside makes nearly explicit. [Greek: aporo] “I am at a loss” opens the Dolabella worry; [Greek: aideomai Troas] is Hector’s line at Iliad VI.442 (“I have shame before the Trojans”), here doing duty for Cicero’s reluctance to praise Caesar’s son-in-law in a form that will look like flattery; [Greek: mempsin] “rebuke” completes the trap — doing nothing draws blame, doing something draws blame. Sections 3 and 4 are domestic and administrative: anxiety about Attica’s health, and a sharp practical refusal to be visited at Arpinum by the Brinnius co-heirs (the inheritance is too small to be worth the trouble; meet at the Tusculanum after the Nones instead).