Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura in the middle of March 709 AUC — mid-March 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae med.\ m.\ Mart., ut videtur, a.\ 709 (45)). The letter belongs to the early phase of the Astura retreat following Tullia’s death, before the Tusculanum sequence resumes in May; the texture is correspondingly clipped — four short paragraphs of estate business and second-hand affairs, with none of the long philosophical reaches that mark the Tusculanum letters of June. Cicero is leaning on Atticus for practical relief: the aqueduct, the column-tax, the tangled inheritance from Cluvius (Piso’s reluctance, the Herennius co-heirs, the boy Lucullus), the suppressed copy of a letter to Brutus, and a lawsuit he wants made to go away.

The Cato allusion in section 2 — solitudinem Catonis, “Cato’s lonely position” — is the characteristic Astura compression: Piso is being put off with the same answer Cato once gave in a comparable straits, and Atticus is expected to recognise the reference without exposition. The closing one-liner, iudiciali molestia ut caream videbis, is the whole posture of these months — Cicero handing over to Atticus the friction of public life so that he can keep his Astura silence intact.