Cicero to Atticus, written from the Tusculanum on the tenth day before the Kalends of June 709 AUC — 23 May 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Tusculano x K.\ Iun.\ a.\ 709 (45)). The letter that opens book 13 in the modern numbering, written four or five days after Atticus left the Tusculanum at the close of book 12. Three threads run through it. First, Atticus has written to young Cicero in Athens on his father’s behalf — evidently a measured admonition, since Cicero approves the tone (“nothing could have been written more firmly or more measuredly”) and singles out the handling of the Tullii, the boy’s hosts and companions there. Second, the project of the gardens — the riverside property that will house the fanum for Tullia — is moving forward through Atticus’s negotiations; Cicero is willing to let the timetable slip to the summer if it secures the place. Third, the still-unsent letter to Caesar that Cicero has been workshopping with Atticus and the Balbi: he is waiting to hear “what those people think.”

The financial language is bare and the emotional language conspicuously layered on top of it. The gardens are wanted for “the running out of life and the lessening of grief” (ad $$ maestitiamque minuendam nihil mihi reperiri potest aptius), the Greek noun — “running-down of life,” a passage of one’s remaining years — rendered here “the running out of life,” [Greek: katabi\=osin]. The familiar paradox of the cluster returns: he cannot bear to urge Atticus on, but only because he is sure Atticus’s eagerness will outrun his own. The closing line on Peducaeus, with its crux marked $$totum in hunc$$, breaks into bare affection: I loved the father; I love the son in himself as much; and you most of all, for wanting both loves done.