Cicero to Atticus, written from Arpinum on iii K.\ Quint. — 29 June 709 AUC, 45 BC. The day before, on iv K.\ Quint. (28 June: see 13.16), Cicero had hoped a messenger would arrive from the city, but a textual corruption in the opening clause makes the precise complaint unrecoverable. What follows is clear enough: the running news questions about Brutus’ plans, about Caesar, are perfunctory; the real concern is little Attica’s health, which Atticus’ last letter (now some days old) had reported was on the mend.

The dialogue addressed to Varro — the re-cast Academica of 13.16 — is now finished: “decidedly clever little things,” Cicero says, with the self-deprecating affection that often marks the way he describes work he is in fact proud of. Two Greek terms structure the second paragraph: polygraph\=otatos (“most prolific writer”), which lays the irony that the recipient is hardly in need of more philosophical material from anyone else, and z\=elotypein / z\=elotypeis (“to be jealous of”), repeated as Cicero polls Atticus on whose company Varro might mind seeing himself in. The opening clause carries one of Perseus’s daggered cruxes ($$non imperassem. igitur aliquid tuis$$); I render the legible sense and mark the obeli.