Cicero to M’. Curius at Patrae, written from Rome about February 44 BC — the third letter of the Curius cluster (7.29, 7.30, 7.31), and Cicero’s reply to a now-lost letter of Curius’s. The Perseus dateline gives ut Febr. a. 710 (44), “around February 44 BC.” (The meta entry’s year-precision placeholder of 4 December 44 BC sits well downstream of the dateline and should be corrected to early 44 BC.)

The letter is short and bittersweet. Acilius (see 7.30) had not after all been needed; nor had the help of Sulpicius. Curius had written that his affairs had been left “neither head nor feet” — a proverbial phrase Cicero turns into a wish: I could wish them feet, so that you might come back. The closing sentences are the famous lament for Roman wit: with the Republic dying, the old urbanitas has dried up, so that Cicero’s friend T. Pomponius Atticus can claim, by his very name, to be the last keeper of “ancient Attic glory.” The seed of urbane wit may yet perish along with the Republic itself — and Curius’s return is the cure.