Cicero to Atticus, written at Antium in April or May 56 BC. The third panel of the library triptych: in Att. 4.4A he asked for Atticus’s book-slaves; in Att. 4.5 he praised them when they had finished the construction and labels; here, with Tyrannio also finished, the famous summing-up: mens addita videtur meis aedibus — “a mind seems to have been added to my house.” The praise of Atticus’s pegmata, the shelving on which the [Greek: sittybai]-tagged rolls now stand, closes the arrangement.

The first section is the same Antium, painted as the quiet provincial counterpart to Rome — “Antium is to Rome what your Buthrotum is to Corcyra,” a chiasmus of two seaside refuges. Cicero is house-hunting for Atticus and has not yet found anything in the country. The Greek tag from a fragmentary tragedy — “Speak nothing great until you have seen the end” — is the prudential reply to a small payment Atticus is anticipating. The closing question about the gladiators (Atticus’s troop, last seen in Att. 4.4A §2) is ironic: write to me if they are winning; if they have lost, I do not ask.