Cicero to Atticus, written from the Arpinate estate on the ninth day before the Kalends of Quintilis 709 AUC — 23 June 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Arpinati ix K.\ Quint.\ a.\ 709 (45)). The first letter from Arpinum after the move flagged in 13.10: Cicero had set out from the Tusculanum on or about the eleventh before the Kalends, the trip being forced on him both by the need to settle the rents of his small estates and by a wish not to keep Brutus, who was waiting at the next-door Tusculan villa, in perpetual attendance on him.

The letter opens with a snap of Greek — [Greek: ou tauton eidos], “not the same look” — the kind of clipped, almost proverbial opening Cicero often uses when he is registering a small private disappointment. The further distance from Atticus and from Rome has altered the texture of the days he had imagined would be straightforward. Section 2 is a short list of news he wants forwarded: any move by Servilia (Brutus’ mother, on the marital question running through these letters), any action by Brutus himself, the date Brutus has fixed for their meeting, and, if convenient, an interview with Piso. The maturum of ripeness is left unexplained — it belongs to the same political matter Cicero and Atticus have been turning over by letter, and the Arpinum isolation makes him want it pushed forward.