Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the fifth day before the Ides of March 709 AUC — 11 March 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae v Id.\ Mart.\ a.\ 709 (45)). A month into the Astura retreat after Tullia’s death, Cicero opens with the figure that governs the cluster: he flees the recollections that bite him with grief and runs back, again, to reminding Atticus — this time about the fanum, the shrine he means to build for his daughter. The kind of monument is settled (Cluatius’s design pleases him) and the fact of it is settled; the site is what he keeps turning over. He resolves to consecrate her “with every kind of memorial drawn from the inventions of every mind, Greek and Latin alike,” and admits the project may chafe his wound open again, but says he already feels bound by something like a vow.

The phrase longum illud tempus cum non ero — “that long stretch of time when I shall not be” — moves him more than the short one he is in, which still feels too long: a quiet Epicurean turn pulled into a private grammar of grief. The remainder is house-keeping: the cover letter to Brutus is enclosed in copy, so Atticus can suppress it if it does not please him; Cocceius is to be kept from putting Cicero off; Libo’s promise is taken on faith; Sulpicius and Egnatius are trusted for the principal sum; Appuleius can be excused. The closing turn is the gentlest possible refusal: Atticus has offered to come to Astura, but the road is long and the parting would hurt — “do what you wish, for whatever you do I shall think both rightly done and done for my sake as well.” Philippus, whom Cicero had feared would intrude on his solitude, greeted him yesterday and left at once for Rome.