Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 11 August 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculana iii Id. Sext. a. 709 (45). Three sections, each on a different piece of the August calendar. First, the news that Caesar is on the move: Lamia has been by with a letter the dictator sent him, making it plain he means to be in Rome before the Ludi Romani; the public holidays attached to the games have been quietly extended again, and Cicero wants to know exactly by how many. Second, Atticus has urged him to use the extra days for “unfolding philosophy” — and gets the dry Greek-flavoured retort that he is “urging on a runner” (currentem hortari), the standard tag for telling someone to do what he is already doing. The catch is Dolabella, his son-in-law of the moment, who must be entertained, and the court case of Torquatus, which keeps him from running down to Puteoli and back.

The third section is the one that ties this letter to several others around it: the affairs of the deceased Cluvius, whose estate Cicero has inherited a share in, with Vestorius acting as agent in Puteoli. The careful tricolon “a more careful or more obliging or, by Hercules, more devoted man” (nec diligentiorem nec officiosiorem nec me hercule nostri studiosiorem) is the kind of small architectural flourish Cicero produces in passing even in a money-and-auction note. The letter closes with the worry that animates so much of the financial correspondence of these months — ne neglegentiores esse videamur, “that we should not appear too negligent” — and the open invitation for Atticus to write back at once.