DCXXIV (A XIII, 13)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
ARPINUM (24 JUNE)
Under the influence of your letter-because you
wrote to me on the subject of Varro—I
have taken my Academica bodily from
men of the highest rank and transferred it to our
friend and contemporary. I have also rearranged it
so as to form four books instead of two. 1 They Certainly have a more imposing effect
than the previous edition, yet after all a good
deal has been cut out. But I should much like you
to write and tell me how you discovered that he
wished it. This much at any rate I long to
know—of whom you perceived him to have
been jealous: unless perchance it was Brutus! By
heaven, that's the last straw! However, I should
be glad to know. The books themselves have left my
hands—unless I am deceived by the usual
author's self-love—so well elaborated,
that there is nothing on the subject even among
Greek writers to be compared with them. Pray do
not be annoyed at your own loss in having had the
treatise on the Academics now in your hands copied
out in vain. 2 This second edition, after all, will be
much more brilliant, concise, and better. In these
circumstances, however, I don't know which way to
turn. I wish to satisfy Dolabella's earnest
desire. I don't see my way to anything, and at the
same time "I fear the Trojans." 3 Now,
even if I do hit on something, shall I be able to
escape adverse criticism? I must therefore be idle
or strike out some other kind of subject.
But why concern ourselves
about these trivialities? Pray tell me how my dear
Attica is. She causes me deep anxiety. But I pore
over your letter again and again: I find comfort
in it. Nevertheless, I wait anxiously for a fresh
one.
ARPINUM (24 JUNE)
