Cicero to Atticus, written from Arpinum on iv K.\ Quint. — 28 June 709 AUC, 45 BC. The weather has shut Cicero inside the villa, and into that enforced retreat falls the central editorial decision of the Academica: the original speakers (Catulus, Lucullus, Hortensius) are out, Cato and Brutus are in — and now, on the basis of Atticus’ just-arrived letter, Varro will be in instead. The reasoning is candid: the first three, though not unlearned, had no professional engagement with this kind of philosophical material, and so the disputation para to prepon (against decorum) sat ill on them. Varro is the natural Antiochean.

The letter is dense with Greek of the technical sort — Akademik\=en syntaxin for the work as a project, para to prepon for the decorum violation, the paired apaideusia / atripsia (“ignorance” / “inexperience”) that distinguishes the two grades of unfitness — the private shorthand by which Cicero and Atticus discuss craft questions. Section 2 turns to the domestic news exchange: Servilia (Brutus’ mother), Brutus himself, Caesar, and the Piso business Atticus is to keep working at. “By the Nones” (5 July) is Cicero’s promised return to Tusculum.