Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the fourth day before the Kalends of April 709 AUC — 29 March 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae iv.\ K.\ Apr.\ a.\ 709 (45)). The estate negotiations have hit a snag: Silius appears to have changed his mind about selling the gardens, citing his son as the reason. Cicero finds the reason plausible — “he has the sort of son he wants” — and is more surprised than Sicca that Atticus still thinks a further inducement (or sticking-point) could close the deal.

Section 2 turns to the comparison Atticus has asked for between the Silius gardens and the Drusi gardens further out. Cicero has never visited the Drusi property; he knows only the old Coponian villa and the famous wood, but not the rental yield of either. He admits frankly that the valuation, for him, is governed by his circumstances rather than any rational calculation. The financing scheme is laid out: if the Faberian debt can be turned to account, he will close the Silius deal in ready cash; failing that, he will fall back on Drusus at Egnatius’s reported price, with Hermogenes as a further source of liquidity. The letter closes with the most candid line in the cluster on Cicero’s own state: let me be in a buyer’s frame of mind, he says, and yet I am so much the servant of my desire and grief that I want you to be the one who guides me. The pairing of cupiditas and dolor as the twin drivers of the purchase is exact.