Cicero to L. Papirius Paetus, written at the Tusculan villa around 20 July 46 BC — Perseus: in Tusculano circ.~xiii K.~Sext.~a.~708 (46), that is, the thirteenth day before the Kalends of Sextilis, counted inclusively. With the courts shut down under Caesar’s dictatorship and his forense regnum — his kingdom of the Forum — gone, Cicero has begun keeping a kind of declamation school for the new ruling generation: Hirtius, Pansa, Dolabella and others come to his villa to declaim with him in Greek and Latin, and he eats with them in return. The conceit of the letter is the parallel with the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, who, when driven into exile, is said to have opened a school at Corinth — a stock anecdote for fallen greatness reduced to schoolmastering.

Four short sections, all of them in Paetus mode. The opening is the Dionysius simile and a list of consolations for his new life: he fortifies himself against the times, his health returns with the exercise, and his oratorical facultas, such as it ever was, comes back too. The set-piece is the death catalogue — in lectulo, fateor, sed non accidit; in acie non fui; ceteri quidem, Pompeius, Lentulus tuus, Scipio, Afranius foede perierunt. at Cato praeclare — four Republicans dead foully, one gloriously, and the option of joining them “when we wish” kept dryly in reserve. Then the gastronomic boast in chiastic balance: pluris iam pavones confeci quam tu pullos columbinos. tu istic te Hateriano iure delectas, ego me hic Hirtiano — more peacocks downed than you have wood-pigeon squabs, your Haterian gravy against my Hirtian. The Greek tag prolegomenas (rhetorical preludes) is the school joke, capped by the proverbial sus Minervam — a pig teaching Minerva. The close turns to Paetus’s finances: if you cannot sell off your aestimationes (Caesar’s debt-relief settlement valuations) or fill your pot of denarii, come back to Rome on the mule you have left after eating the gelding, and take the junior master’s bench beside mine — with a cushion thrown in.