Cicero to Atticus, written from Arpinum on prid.\ K.\ Quint. — 30 June 709 AUC, 45 BC, the last day before the Kalends of Quintilis and the close of the four-letter Arpinum sequence (13.14, 13.16, 13.17, 13.19). The framing items are domestic: Attica is doing well enough that she has asked Atticus not to be gloomy, and the situation generally is akindyna, “without danger.” Balbus and Oppius approve of the just-published Pro Ligario and have forwarded it to Caesar — Atticus’ part in that placement is now explicit.

The heart of the letter, in section 3 and the long section 4, is one of the most lucid statements Cicero ever made about his own practice as a writer of dialogue. He explains the rule that had kept him from putting Varro in (philendoxos, no flattery of the living); the casting of the Academica now redone with Varro as Antiochean speaker against Cicero himself (with Atticus the third interlocutor); the contrasting Heraclidean manner of the De Re Publica and De Oratore, where the speakers are old masters and the author keeps silent (k\=ophon pros\=opon, the “mute mask”); and finally the Aristotelian manner of the De Finibus, where the author leads. The final clause confesses the awkwardness Cicero has just created for himself: Antiochus’ arguments are pithana (“persuasive”), and rendered with care by Cicero they do not let his own Academic position come out as the stronger one. Greek terms run thick: akindyna, philendoxos, akatal\=epsian, k\=ophon pros\=opon, Aristoteleion, az\=elotyp\=eton, logik\=otera, hermaion, pithana; together with the Greek title peri tel\=on (De Finibus, “On Ends”) and the adjective Peripat\=etika attached to Piso’s part. One textual crux: $$easque$$, daggered by editors, between the two sentences on the Antiochean parts; I render the surrounding sense without trying to repair it.