Cicero to Atticus, written from the Tusculanum on the twelfth day before the Kalends of June 709 AUC — 21 May 45 BC (Scr.\ in Tusculano xii K.\ Iun.\ a.\ 709 (45)). A short, businesslike letter that mixes a favour for a member of young Cicero’s Athens circle with the running threads of the spring: the letter to Caesar (still pending Balbus’ and Oppius’ verdict, on which see 12.51), and the search for the gardens that will house the shrine for Tullia. L. Tullius Montanus, travelling with young Cicero, is on the hook for 20,000 sesterces he guaranteed for one Flaminius; the brother-in-law has written, and Cicero asks Atticus to do what he can with Plancus on Montanus’ behalf — pertinet ad nostrum officium, “it belongs to my obligation.”

The second section runs through the property-hunt — Silius’s place is now of less concern, but Atticus must close on either the Scapulan or the Clodian gardens; Clodia herself is the variable, and Cicero is unclear whether the hesitation is about her arrival or about whether she is selling at all. The aside on the divorce of Cornelius Lentulus Spinther is a flash of Roman gossip in a letter otherwise transacted. The closing joke about the Latin philosophical works — apographa sunt, “they are transcripts” [Greek: apographa], made with less labour because Cicero supplies only the words and he has those in abundance — is one of the few moments in the cluster when he speaks lightly about the Academica and its sister projects, the works that are getting written through the grief.