Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the fourth day before the Ides of May 709 AUC — 12 May 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae iv Id.\ Mai.\ a.\ 709 (45)). A brief two-section note, written as Cicero prepares the move out of Astura. He approves of Atticus’ decision to handle his business from home — evidently a domestic withdrawal to take the affair through without the interruptions of the city — and confirms his own schedule: the day after the Ides at Lanuvium, then either to Rome or to the Tusculanum.

The middle of the first section carries one of the more disturbed manuscript passages in the Astura sequence; the daggered text is preserved as the editors mark it, and the sense returns at believe me, to a degree you cannot imagine. What is clear is Cicero’s admission that he knows Atticus does not approve of the project (the shrine, the gardens, the whole obsession), but that he is bound to it past the point at which Atticus can be expected merely to tolerate it: ferendus? immo vero etiam adiuvandus, “bear with? no, indeed even help.” The second section runs through the estate alternatives: Otho is failing, Clodia is the next best, and Atticus is asked to bring off anything he can — including the Trebonian heirs — before the summer slips away. The vow Cicero claims to be bound by is the inward one, the promise of the shrine to Tullia.