Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 1 June 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano Vii. K. Iun. a. 709 (45). The sequel to 13.27 and the closing letter of the late-May Tusculan run before the early-June continuation: the dedication-shuffle around Varro and the Academica revision proceed in the background, but the foreground is again the abandoned letter of advice to Caesar, on which Cicero now declares himself defeated — not by the indecency of flattering the dictator (which, he admits in a sharp aside, ought to deter him) but by the simple fact that nothing useful occurs to him.

Section 2 is the heart: Cicero contrasts his blank draftsman’s slate with the schoolroom panegyrists who could exhort Alexander to glory because their young king was ablaze for it, and confesses that what he “carved out of an oak” was criticized precisely for the few decent strokes in it. Section 3 sharpens the historical analogy: even Aristotle’s pupil turned tyrant once the kingship took hold, so what hope of restraint in this contubernalis of Quirinus’s procession (a glance at the statue of Caesar carried in the parade of the gods)? One Greek phrase: probl\=ema Archid\=emou, “the puzzle of Archidemus,” an unidentified Stoic-dialectical reference that does duty here as the old spur Cicero had felt to write the letter, now extinguished. The autograph postscript at section 4 is a piece of marriage- market gossip: Thalna’s suit for Cornificia, blocked by the women of the house on financial grounds, with the dowry spelled out in figures (the Latin abbreviates the sum: 800,000 sesterces).