Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 29 May 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano iv K. Iun. a. 709 (45). The last of the late-May daily letters from Tusculum. Three short sections: the Faberian negotiations are still the hinge on which the gardens purchase — and behind the gardens purchase, the shrine for Tullia — depends; Cicero needs more Dicaearchus for the Academica revision; and the Mummius-commission question raised in 13.30 is now resolved (Postumius, not Tuditanus, supplied by Atticus’s recollection of a statue at the Isthmus).

Five Greek phrases punctuate the page. peri psychēs “On the Soul,” katabaseōs “of the Descent,” and Tripolitikon are book titles — Dicaearchus’s philosophical and political dialogues that Cicero wants on his desk for the new four-book Academica. dia sēmeiōn, “in shorthand,” apologises for an obscure earlier note (Cicero had been writing in coded brachygraphy and so Atticus had missed the point); syllogon and pompeusai kai tois prosōpois pick up the metaphor running through the cluster — the dialogue is being cast like a Greek procession, with the right prosōpa, “faces” or “characters,” marching in their proper places. The reference to “new prefaces” in which Catulus and Lucullus are each praised is to the still-extant earlier two-book version of the Academica (the Catulus and Lucullus), which Cicero is now in the process of superseding by the four-book Varro-dedication. The whole cluster of 13.29–32 belongs to that pivot.