Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the fourth day before the Kalends of March 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano iv K.\ Mart.\ a.\ 705 (49)). One of the shortest notes in the collection: a single paragraph reporting on Dionysius, the Greek tutor of the younger Cicero and his cousin Quintus, whose ingratitude has been a running theme in this part of the correspondence.

Dionysius has turned up unannounced — and turned out to be looking for a way to leave the household. Cicero, having pressed Atticus more than once for instruction on how to handle him, here simply records the meeting: a frank conversation, an unconvincing accounting of where the man’s money is, some vague trouble with his slaves, and a parting that Cicero pairs in two crisp negatives — “as the boys’ teacher, not gladly; as an ungrateful man, not unwillingly.” The verdict on Dionysius’s behaviour is the antithesis itself.