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 DCXXIX (A XIII, 19)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

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