Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 25 May 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano viii K. Iun. a. 709 (45). Mid-cluster in the Tusculan daily-letter run of late May and early June: the Academica revision and the dedication-shuffle around Varro continue in the background, but this letter and its sequel 13.28 are dominated by Cicero’s gathering second thoughts about the letter of political advice to Caesar that Atticus had urged him to compose.

Caesar’s intimates have now read the draft and have come back with so many demanded alterations that Cicero seizes on their reaction as a way out of the whole project. The texture is candid relief: he had set out to flatter and he knows it, the substance was hollow, and to send the thing now — after long silence and on the eve of a Parthian campaign — would only expose him further. Five Greek phrases mark the joints of the self-justification: kolakeia (“flattery,” the honest name for what the letter was); epiteugma and apoteugma (“success” and “failure,” a balanced pair weighed against the risk); parakinduneuein (“running the risk”); and meiligma (“sop” or “placation,” Cicero’s fear that the letter would be read as making amends for his Cato); with spoud\=e (“serious pains”) at the close. Section 2 turns abruptly to property business — gardens for the shrine, the Faberius debt, an auction day — and ends with a courier passed on for news about Atticus’s daughter Attica.