e, he and Varro remained in
the same semi-friendly state. About the year 54 B.C., as we have already
seen, Atticus in vain urged his friend to dedicate some work to the great
polymath. After the fall of the Pompeian cause, Cicero and Varro do seem to
have been drawn a little closer together. Eight letters, written mostly in
the year before the _Academica_ was published, testify to this
approximation[300]. Still they are all cold, forced and artificial; very
different from the letters Cicero addressed to his real intimates, such for
instance as Sulpicius, Caelius, Paetus, Plancus, and Trebatius. They all
show a fear of giving offence to the harsh temper of Varro, and a humility
in presence of his vast learning which is by no means natural to Cicero.
The negotiations between Atticus and Cicero with respect to the dedication
of the second edition, as detailed already, show sufficiently that this
slight increase in cordiality did not lead to friendship[301].

The philosophical views of Varro can be gathered with tolerable accuracy
from Augustine, who quotes considerably from, the work of Varro _De
Philosophia_[302]. Beyond doubt he was a follower of Antiochus and the
so-called Old Academy. How he selected this school from, among the 288
philosophies which he considered possible, by an elaborate and pedantic
process of exhaustion, may be read by the curious in Augustine. My notes on
the _Academica Posteriora_ will show that there is no reason for accusing
Cicero of having mistaken Varro's philosophical views. This supposition
owes its currency to Mueller, who, from Stoic phrases in the _De Lingua
Latina_, concluded that Varro had passed over to the Stoics before that
work was written. All that was Stoic in Varro came from Antiochus[303].

The exact specification of the changes in the arrangement of the
subject-matter, necessitated by the dedication to Varro, will be more
conveniently deferred till we come to the fragments of the second edition
preserved by Nonius and others. Roughly speaking, the following were the
contents of the four books. Book I.: the historico-philosophical exposition
of Antiochus' views, formerly given by Hortensius, now by Varro; then the
historical justification of the Philonian position, which Cicero had given
in the first edition as an answer to Hortensius[304]. Book II.: an
exposition by Cicero of Carneades' positive teaching, practically the same
as that given by Catulus in ed. I.; to this was app