Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the fifth day before the Nones of May 709 AUC — 3 May 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae v Non.\ Mai.\ a.\ 709 (45)). Cicero is back at Astura after the brief journey to Sicca’s suburbanum and Rome. The first section is the most explicit statement in the whole sequence of what the fanum is for: “I want a shrine made, and this cannot be torn from me.” He is bent on escaping any resemblance to a tomb, both to avoid the funerary law’s penalty and — the deeper reason — to attain for Tullia an apotheosis, [Greek: apothe\=osin]: a deification in the Greek manner.

The aside on placing the shrine within the villa rather than in open ground is among the most human moments of the sequence: Cicero fears commutationes dominorum, the changes of owners that would leave the shrine unprotected. In a field, posterity will hold it religiously; in a private house, it depends on the next purchaser. He confesses these to be ineptiae — “foolish notions,” although the word in Latin also has a sense of misplaced fussiness — and asks Atticus to send him the text of the funerary law to study for evasions. The second section turns to Brutus’ refusal to visit the Cumanum (a small obiurgatio for Atticus to transmit) and to the architect Cluatius, who is to be encouraged in the work whatever site is finally chosen. The closing “you yourself, perhaps, will be at the villa tomorrow” is the kind of plain practical note that keeps appearing in the middle of the metaphysics.