Cicero to Atticus, written from the Tusculanum on 11 July 709 AUC (Perseus dateline v Id.\ Quint.\ a.\ 709 (45)), the day after Ad Atticum 13.23 and on the same two running threads: a rumoured sighting of young Marcus Cicero at Corcyra on his way to Athens, and the dedication of the Academica to Varro. Cicero has heard the Corcyra report not from Atticus but at third hand, through a freedman of Clodius reporting an Andromenes, and is irritated that no letter has come from his son even to his old friend. The four “parchments” [Greek: diphtherai] are the four rolls of the Academica as now constituted, and they are in Atticus’ hands to release or withhold. Section 2 is a brief follow-up to the previous day’s letter on the inheritance withholding-clause: Atticus is to push it through without re-opening it.

Two Greek tags carry the texture. The [Greek: diphtherai] is wonderfully concrete — four physical quires sitting on Atticus’ table — and at the same time slightly distancing, as though Cicero is trying to think of the dedication as a piece of book-trade rather than the affectionate gesture he has spent weeks worrying over. The [Greek: aideomai] (“I feel no scruple”) disclaims, perhaps unconvincingly, the embarrassment that has been driving the whole Varro thread; the admission “but I was the more afraid as to how he himself would think of the thing” is the real motive just under the surface. The idiom in alteram aurem (“into the other ear with it”) is the Latin counterpart of “in one ear and out the other” — Cicero is signalling that, having handed the business off, he intends to stop fretting.