Cicero to Atticus, written from his ancestral estate at Arpinum on v K.\ Quint. — 27 June 709 AUC, 45 BC. Cicero has come up from the Tusculanum to put the small properties in order before Caesar’s return makes travel impossible (see 13.9), and the rains, as 13.16 will report, are keeping him indoors. The letter is two short paragraphs: a query whether Atticus approves the plan to dedicate the Academica to Varro (with Atticus himself written in as a third speaker), and a piece of domestic anxiety because Attica has been silent three days.

The register is the unhurried intimacy of two old correspondents at a slow stretch: half writing-room business (nomina iam facta sunt, “the names have been assigned,” i.e. the dramatis personae of the dialogue are set, but the casting can still be changed), half the small confession that with no messenger arrived from Atticus there has been nothing of his own to write either. No Greek phrases in this letter; no cruxes.