Ad Atticum 1.3
Ad Atticum 1.3
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written at Rome late in 67 BC — late enough that Cicero has been elected praetor and has just betrothed his daughter Tullia, then about seven years old, to Gaius Calpurnius Piso Frugi (the marriage will hold until Piso’s death in 57 BC, while Cicero is in exile, and his memory will mark the rest of the corpus). The letter opens on a small affectionate joke: Atticus’s grandmother has died “of longing for you, and at the same time because she feared the Latin towns would not stand to their duty and would not bring victims up to the Alban Mount,” the old woman’s piety and the political season folded into one mock-grandiloquent sentence. The body covers the safe arrival at Caieta of more statues from Greece, and the final failure of Cicero’s mediation between Atticus and the unnamed “friend” (Lucceius, see Att. 1.11). Sallustius, who had been blaming Cicero on Atticus’s behalf, has himself now seen that Lucceius is too set to be moved.