Marcus Pomponius Dionysius

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 4.11 §2 Dionysius

  Marcus Pomponius Dionysius, freedman of Atticus and tutor to the young Cicero and Quintus; here Cicero's reading-companion at Cumae.

• Ad Atticum 4.18 §5 I miss Dionysius so badly

  M. Pomponius Dionysius, a learned freedman of Atticus who served as tutor to Cicero's son Marcus and nephew Quintus; Cicero longs for his return along with Atticus's.

• Ad Atticum 7.4 §1 not to seem to praise a freedman

  Dionysius was a libertinus (freedman), so unreserved praise of him would carry a faint social impropriety; Cicero's hedge marks the status gap even as he commends the tutor's character.

• Ad Atticum 8.4 §1 That Dionysius of yours

  M. Pomponius Dionysius, the learned freedman whom Atticus had recommended and who served as tutor to Cicero's son and nephew; his refusal to follow Cicero into the war's danger is the personal grievance that runs through letters 8.4 to 8.7. The sting is intimate: Cicero had honoured him as a scholar and was repaid with desertion.

• Ad Atticum 8.5 §1 Dionysius himself came to me

  After his furious refusal in 8.4, the tutor Dionysius turns up in person at Formiae, prompted (Cicero guesses) by a rebuke from Atticus. The reconciliation is grudging: Cicero has already slipped a sharp letter to him into the packet and now wants it intercepted.

• Ad Atticum 8.10 §1 Dionysius, having come to me beyond my expectation

  M. Pomponius Dionysius, the learned freedman whom Atticus had given Cicero as tutor to his son and nephew; his desertion in the crisis of 49 BC is a running grievance through book 8, and this is the second of the strained interviews Cicero reports.

• Ad Atticum 8.10 §1 as the boys' teacher, not gladly; as an ungrateful man, not unwillingly

  Cicero's pointed antithesis: he is sorry to lose the boys' tutor but glad to be rid of an ingrate. The balanced clauses sum up his verdict on Dionysius's desertion.

• Ad Atticum 10.2 §2 I wish Dionysius had not set out to me

  M. Pomponius Dionysius, a learned freedman who had tutored Cicero's son and nephew, had quarrelled with the family and is here treated as estranged. Cicero, harried by the war, did not want the awkwardness of a hostile visitor witnessing his troubles.

• Ad Atticum 10.16 §1 Dionysius came to me

  M. Pomponius Dionysius, a learned freedman, had been the tutor of Cicero's son and nephew and bore Atticus's nomen as a former slave of his. His refusal to follow Cicero into exile abroad wounded Cicero deeply, as the surrounding paragraph shows.