Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 28 May 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano v K. Iun. a. 709 (45). The second of the day’s letters: Cicero opens with the dating, “On the fifth before the Kalends, in the morning,” and moves through four short sections covering the gardens financing, a request for Dicaearchus’s books, a sudden settled decision about the letter to Caesar, and the rival bidder Otho.

Three Greek phrases punctuate the page. katabaseōs, “of the Descent,” is a title — Dicaearchus’s lost treatise (perhaps The Descent into the Cave of Trophonius) which Cicero wants alongside the political dialogues for his Varro-revision work. kekrika, “I have decided,” is the clipped Greek perfect that Cicero uses to mark a settled intellectual judgement: he has decided not to send the proposed letter of advice to Caesar after all, because the only counsel he could honestly give — wait to settle affairs at home before the Parthian campaign — is what Caesar is reportedly saying anyway. The line that follows is bitter: “Let us throw all that aside and at least be half-free; which we shall achieve by keeping silent and lying low.” The closing paragraph returns to the Scapulan gardens, with a recalled price-comparison (Albanius paid 11,500,000 HS for a thousand iugera next door), and a jab at the rival Otho’s father — o gulam insulsam! pudet me patris: “What a tasteless palate! I am ashamed of his father.”