Cicero to L. Papirius Paetus, written at Rome after the Ides of August (13 August) 46 BC — Perseus: Romae post Id.~Sext.~a.~708 (46). A brief two-section reply to a teasing letter of Paetus’s, who had reported (with an edge) that L.~Cornelius Balbus, the Caesarian power-broker, had been content at Paetus’s table with a slender spread — the implied moral being that if kings live abstemiously, ex-consuls ought to live more so. Cicero swats it back by reporting that he has “fished it all out” of Balbus himself, who came straight from the city gate to Cicero’s house: nowhere, Balbus swore, had he ever been more gladly received. The punchline turns on the Balbus / balbi pun — the stutterers against the articulate — and the gag of rating the dinner above the conversation. Cicero closes with a note that he keeps being held back day by day, but when he can clear his way to Campania he will not be the one to let Paetus complain of late notice. The lady (suam) whom Balbus skipped on his way in from the gate is unidentified — probably a mistress, a familiar Roman joke.