Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the sixth day before the Kalends of Sextilis 709 AUC — 27 July 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae vi K.\ Sext.\ a.\ 709 (45)). A single short section, written late in the day with sleep coming on. Cicero is still at the seaside villa to which he had retreated after the death of his daughter Tullia in February; the silence of the place is what he wants, and what holds him there. “Nothing is more agreeable than this solitude — if only the son of Amyntas had not broken in for a little.”

The interloper is some chatterbox visitor; “son of Amyntas” — the father of Philip of Macedon and so of Alexander — is a sly sneer at the pretensions of whoever it was. Cicero glosses the visit in Greek: \=o aperantologias a\=edous, “oh, the unending, tedious chatter.” The villa, the shore, the sea-view and the surrounding hills he loves: the rest he does not.