Cicero to Atticus, written at the Puteolan villa on 11 May 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Puteolano v Id. Mai. a. 710 (44). Cicero has crossed the bay from Pompeii by boat, stopped a night at Lucullus’s, and arrived at his own Puteolan house, where two further letters from Atticus reach him on top of the one handed to him as he stepped ashore. The letter works through them in series. Antony has slipped through Misenum into Samnium before Cicero could intercept him, so the Buthrotum business — Atticus’s persistent grievance about the colony being planted on his estates — must wait for Rome. Lucius Antonius has been haranguing horribly; Dolabella, by contrast, “brilliantly” (the clearing of the Forum column is meant). On the dowry: he can keep the money, Cicero says, so long as he pays the agreed instalment on the Ides.

The centre of the letter, section 3, is a small ars poetica. Asked to write up a speech for Brutus, Cicero begs off with a [Greek: katholikon theorema] “general theorem” about authors: no poet or orator has ever thought any other man better than himself — even bad ones think so; so must Brutus, with his gift and learning. Cicero cites their recent disagreement over the funeral edict and over De Optimo Genere Dicendi, and ends with a snatch of Atilius (“to each his own betrothed, to me my own”), which he calls inelegant in the same breath that he quotes it. He then turns to political weather: the edict of Brutus and Cassius approved, Hirtius coachable but lodging with Balbus, Dolabella’s two recent strokes a real advance. Section 5 catches Atticus in a half-blasphemy against Epicurus ([Greek: m\=e]) and teases him that Brutus’s slight scowl ought to deter him. Cicero is dashing off the letter because Cassius’s courier is leaving; he is about to call on Pilia, then sail across to Vestorius’s for dinner.