Cicero to Atticus, written from the Tusculan villa late in 46 BC — Perseus: in Tusculano m.~interc.~post.~a.~708 (46), that is, during the second intercalary month inserted into that year. The letter is a short, businesslike reply touching three matters: an item of bad news about one Seius; the question of a possible new marriage for Cicero, who had divorced Terentia earlier in the year; and, in a postscript opened after the letter had been sealed, a word about Attica’s health.

The marriage talk is the substance. Atticus had evidently sounded Cicero on candidates: Pompeia, the daughter of Pompeius Magnus, is firmly declined again; and the other woman — Atticus will know who — Cicero finds repulsive on sight. Postumia, the wife of the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus, has been making the rounds at Caesonius’s house in the role of go-between. The whole exchange is conducted in the dry shorthand of two old friends who do not need to spell anything out, and the philosophical opener — everything human must be reckoned bearable — is the mood-music for what follows, not a separate consolation.