Cicero to Atticus, written from the Tusculan villa in July 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Tusculano in m.\ Quint.\ a.\ 708 (46)). A very short two- section letter, sharp-tongued and dense with Greek quotation. 1 is an exasperated burst about Cicero’s brother Quintus, who, for the fourth time — “or rather the thousandth” — shows no sense, taking pleasure in his son the Lupercus and in his freedman Statius, so as to see his house heaped with a double disgrace; Cicero adds Philotimus as a third. What singular folly, were Cicero’s own not greater. And what effrontery, that Quintus should have hit up Atticus for a contribution, eranos, in this matter.

The closing tirade builds the figure out: suppose he had come to no parched spring but to Pirene itself, the famous Corinthian fount — still, to draw on Atticus, who is, in his own letter’s phrase, the “holy outbreath of Alpheus” in the spring, and in such straits of his own as those — where can it possibly lead? The Pindaric tag (Ol.\ 1) is one of the most allusive things in this stretch of correspondence. 2 is the briefest possible reset: “but let him see to that himself.” The Cato pleases Cicero — and Bassus Lucilius, too, is pleased with his own Cato.