- haps complains, for instance, that in these books my side in
the argument is defended at greater length than his own. That, on my honour, you will find not to be the case if you ever get your holiday in Epirus—for at present my works have to give place to Alexion's business letters. But after all I don't despair of the book securing Varro's approval, and I am not sorry that my plan should be persisted in, as I have gone to some expense in long paper;[1] but I say again and again—it shall be done at your risk. Wherefore, if you have any hesitation, let us change to Brutus, for he too is an adherent of Antiochus. What an excellent likeness of the Academy itself, with its instability, its shifting views, now this way and now that! But, please tell me, did you really like my letter to Varro? May I be hanged if I ever take so much trouble again about anything! Consequently I did not dictate it even to Tiro,[2] who usually takes down whole periods at a breath, but syllable by syllable to Spintharus.[3]
DCXL (A XIII, 35 AND 36)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
Tusculum, 13 July
What a disgraceful thing! A countryman of yours[4] enlarges
the city, which he had never seen two years ago, and
regards it as too small to hold the great man, too! So I am
longing for a letter from you on the subject.
You say that you will hand the books to Varro as soon as, was a particularly large and expensive kind either of paper or parchment. It was the size and shape, not the material, that gave the name. Cicero refers to it again in Att. xvi. 3. Pliny (N. H. xiii. 80) says that it was a cubit broad. Cicero had had the "presentation copy" written on this expensive material.]
