Cicero to P. Cornelius Dolabella, written at Cicero’s Cumanum villa in (probably) late 45 BC. The Perseus dateline is partially abbreviated — in Cumano mcd. m. Dcc. a.~709 (45) — and the meta entry carries the year-precision placeholder -0045-01-17; the strongest internal indicator is the mention of the oratiuncula pro Deiotaro, the little speech for King Deiotarus, which Cicero delivered before Caesar in Rome in November 45 and which here he sends to Dolabella in writing. The letter is therefore late autumn or winter of 45.

Two short paragraphs, each in a different register. The first is a playful tease: Cicero congratulates the people of Baiae on the resort’s having suddenly become healthy, then suggests, mock-suspicious, that perhaps Baiae has only put on this charm to please Dolabella, and that sky and earth themselves will set aside their nature if it suits him. The second turns to the speech and to a personal injury Dolabella has suffered (unspecified, but possibly the matrimonial strain after his divorce from Tullia, or some political slight): Cicero downplays the speech with the lovely self-deprecating phrase levidense crasso filo — “a little gift of slight stuff and coarse thread” — and closes with the recommendation that Dolabella bear his troubles wisely, so that his own moderation may shame the injustice of others. Metadata note: the meta/works.yaml entry carries the placeholder day -0045-01-17 at year precision, which disagrees with the Perseus dateline’s location of the letter at Cumano in 45; the internal reference to the Pro Deiotaro points to late 45, after the speech’s November delivery. The entry’s date should be revised when the metadata is consolidated.