Cicero to Atticus, written at Puteoli, in the Cluvian gardens, on 3 May 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Puteolano sive hortis Cluvianis v Non. Mai. a. 710 (44). The letter is dictated as Cicero boards a small rowing-boat at the Cluvian estate, with a stopover planned at Paetus’s table (tyrotarichum — “cheese-and-salt-fish,” the comic shorthand for a modest meal) and then on to Pompeii. The bay of Naples is at once delicious and uninhabitable: o loca ceteroqui valde expetenda, interpellantium autem multitudine paene fugienda.

The substantive middle section returns to the praise of Dolabella begun in 14.15, with two Greek tags piled up: aristeian (an Iliadic word — a hero’s individual feat of arms) and anathe\=or\=esis (the “reconsideration” of 14.15, repeated). Brutus, Cicero half-jokes, could now wear a gold crown through the Forum unmolested, with the column down and the punishments freshly visible. Section 3 introduces a personal preoccupation that will run through the next several letters: Cicero wants to slip away to Athens to look in on his student son, and is suspicious of the tutor Leonides’ too-careful praise (“This is not the testimony of a man who trusts him but rather of one who fears for him”). Herodes, who was asked to report kata miton — “thread by thread” — has sent nothing, which Cicero reads as itself a report.