Cicero to Atticus from the Arpinum estate, 3 July 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Arpinati. v Non. Quint. a. 710 (44), written the day after 15.26 and a few hours before 15.28 of the same day. A short, intimate letter in three sections. Cicero is glad Atticus has urged him to write to Sestius, because he had already done so by the previous day’s courier, “in the most affectionate terms”; he defends himself against Sestius’s complaint about being missed at Puteoli (Sestius was the one who failed to come back from Cosa in time). Section 2 is a small, moving turn: Atticus had wept on parting from him at Tusculum, and Cicero would have changed his whole plan had he seen it. The hope of meeting again soon is what sustains them both. He promises letters in abundance, the book On Glory — imminent — and a smaller piece in the Heraclidean manner to lie hidden in Atticus’s library.

Section 3 turns to the household. Cicero’s grand-niece Attica has reason to complain (of his silence, presumably); Atticus’s news about Bacchis and the garlands on the statues is welcome, and Cicero asks that nothing be left out. The closing line is one of those characteristic Ciceronian flashes: “What a disgraceful son your sister has!” — of Quintus the younger, arriving uninvited at dinner — with the Homeric phrase aut\=ei boulysei (“with the ox-loosing,” i.e. at the hour when ploughmen unyoke their oxen) to fix the moment of his arrival in the high register of epic.