Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 3 June 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano iii Non. Iun. a. 709 (45). Three short sections of pure business chatter from the Tusculan daily-letter run: an outburst of irritation at Balbus and Faberius for having had to be told repeatedly that the property declaration was filed; an inventory of pending transactions — a Vergilius purchase, a debt with Cispius and Plancus, the haggling with Otho over the Scapulan gardens, a valuation of an estate; and, hanging on to the end, a request for Atticus to look up the consulship of Cnaeus Cornelius and Lucius Mummius (146 BC) in the senatorial decrees, with a prosopographical question about whether Hortensius’s Tuditanus was a quaestor, a military tribune, or simply on the staff in the Achaean war.

Three Greek phrases punctuate the letter, all colloquial. dys\=opia — “embarrassment” or “awkwardness” — captures Cicero’s relief at having no scruple about buying a property out from under Vergilius, since he owes the man nothing. katabase\=os — “of the descent” — is the title of one of Dicaearchus’s works (the Descent into Trophonius’s cave), here as a book Cicero is still waiting to receive. eulogon, “plausible,” is the everyday Stoic-philosophical adverb that Cicero reaches for when adjudicating a historical guess. The Latin carries several cruxes preserved as daggers — H in Capitolio, the half-recoverable note on Balbus’s business; exspecto, where the verb governing katabase\=os is uncertain; and two near the close of section 3 where the text breaks down on the question of Antiochus’s position in the army at Corinth.