Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the sixth day before the Ides of March 709 AUC — 10 March 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae vi Id.\ Mart.\ a.\ 709 (45)). A single unnumbered paragraph in the manuscript tradition. The letter answers an offer from Atticus to leave his Roman business and come to Astura: Cicero refuses, saying he will come himself if Atticus is held up longer. The acknowledgement that follows is plain — if there were any relief, it would be in Atticus alone — and the qualifier is even plainer: nothing so far has in fact helped him in any way.

The middle of the letter is a small clinical inventory of failed places: Atticus’s town house “was not thought right for me,” Cicero’s own he could not bear, even somewhere nearer to Rome would not in fact put him with Atticus, because the business that holds Atticus now would hold him then too. Astura’s solitudo suits him best of any of them — but L.\ Marcius Philippus, his neighbour at Astura (stepfather of Octavian), arrived the previous evening, and Cicero fears the solitude will be broken. The closing sentence, me scriptio et litterae non leniunt sed obturbant, is the counterweight to 12.14.3: where yesterday writing held him back from the worst of the force, today it bewilders him. The register flexes day by day.