Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 12 July 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano iv Id. Quint. a. 709 (45). Two sections of brisk practical business: first, the timing of Cicero’s coming to Rome and the choreography of not making it look as if he were going up on the Ides only to “escort” Brutus to the city or to be present for Brutus’s will-signing; second, the still-unresolved question of whether Atticus is willing to take the risk of presenting the Academica to Varro as their dedicatee. (The manuscript transmission preserves no section 2 of this letter, so the Latin — and hence this translation — runs 1, 3.)

The texture is intimate, telegraphic, half-anxious. Four short Greek phrases punctuate it: asaphesteros (“rather too obscure,” a writer’s self-criticism that Atticus’s already-read letter exposed); deinos an\=er, “a formidable man,” followed by the half-line of Homer (Il. 11.654) tacha ken kai anaition aiti\=o\=oto — “he might well bring a charge even against one in no way to blame” — which is Cicero’s image of Varro the prickly dedicatee, ready to take offense whatever the book does; and periochas, the “outlines” or running summaries that Tiro can take down at speed, contrasted with the syllable-by- syllable dictation Cicero just gave to Spintharus for the labour-intensive Varro letter. The closing flourish — o Academiam volaticam et sui similem!, “O the flighty Academy, true to itself!” — catches the joke whole: the New Academy’s signature is suspension of judgement, and Cicero is suspending judgement on which of two Academics, Varro or Brutus, to give the book to. The crux ad tabulam I render “for the auction” (Shackleton Bailey’s reading; tabula as the auctioneer’s notice-board), though some take it of an accounts-tablet for the will.