DCXXIX (A XIII, 19)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
Arpinum, 29 June
Hilarus the copyist had just left me on the 28th, to whom
I had delivered a letter for you, when your letter-carrier
arrived with yours dated the day before: in which the
sentence that pleased me most was, "Our dear Attica begs
you not to be cast down," and that in which you say that all
danger is over. To my speech for Ligarius I see that your
authority has served as an excellent advertisement. For
Balbus and Oppius have written to say that they like it extremely,
and have therefore sent that poor little speech to
Cæsar. So this is what you meant by what you wrote to me
before. As to Varro, I should not be influenced by the
motive you mention, that is, to avoid being thought fond of
great men—for my principle has always been not to include
any living person among the interlocutors of my dialogues.
But as you say that it is desired by Varro and that
he will value it highly, I have composed the books and
finished a complete review of the whole Academic philosophy
in four books—how well I can't say, but with a
minute care which nothing could surpass. In them the
arguments so brilliantly deduced by Antiochus against the
doctrine of [Greek: akatalêpsia] (impossibility of attaining certainty)
I have assigned to Varro. To them I answer in person.
You are the third personage in our conversation. If I had
represented Cotta and Varro as keeping up the argument,
according to the suggestion contained in your last letter, I
should have been myself a persona muta. This is often the
case with graceful effect in ancient dramatis personæ—for
instance, Heraclides did it in many of his dialogues, and so
did I in the six books of the de Republica. So again in my
three books de Oratore with which I am fully satisfied.
In these too the persons represented are of such a character
that silence on my part was natural. For the speakers are
