The fourth letter is the shortest and arguably the least studied of Aelian’s 20 Rustic Epistles. A closer examination of this letter reveals, however, that it has some interesting aspects in terms of both language and content. In Ep. 4, Aelian presents himself as a capable Atticist author who has specialist vocabulary at his command. Furthermore, this article argues that Ep. 4 should be read together with the following letter and thus tells in nuce the story of how and why Anthemion took Baeton’s bees.