Cicero to L. Papirius Paetus, written at Rome at the end of the earlier intercalary month or the start of the later one of 46 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae ex. m. interc. pr. aut in. post a. 708 (46). In Caesar’s calendar-reform year, 46 BC had two intercalary months inserted between November and December; this letter falls at the seam between them, roughly mid-November Julian. Metadata note: the meta/works.yaml entry currently carries -0046-03-03 with year-precision — a wildly wrong date that should be corrected to approximately -0046-11-15 with month-precision (or, more conservatively, day-precision within the intercalary period). The Latin filename prefix 046bc- is correct as-is; only the entry needs revision.

One of the most-cited of Cicero’s letters: an unembarrassed report of his presence at a dinner-party at the house of Volumnius Eutrapelus, with Atticus reclining above him, Verrius below, and (low on the same couch as Eutrapelus, when Cicero finally lets it slip) the famous actress Cytheris. Three short sections, each with its own swerve. Section 1 begins as a defence of the cheerful servitudo that the new dispensation has imposed — philosophy is exhausting, books are a refuge, but even books have their measure — and ends, with comic timing, audi reliqua: “hear the rest. Below Eutrapelus reclined Cytheris.” Section 2 anticipates Paetus’s mock- incredulous reaction in faux-epic verse (cuius ob os Graii ora obvertebant sua, “on whose face the Greeks used to turn their faces to gaze”), then deflects with the Aristippus- and-Lais anecdote habeo, non habeor — “I have her, I am not had by her” — which Cicero notes works better in Greek (ekh\=o, ouk ekhomai) and leaves untranslated. Section 3 brings the joke home: Paetus once mocked a philosopher who asked whether the world has one heaven or many, by saying he had been asking since morning what was for dinner — a Paetus tale, told back to Paetus.

One Greek phrase in script: z\=et\=ema (a question, problem) put to Dion the philosopher about how to manage one’s appetite at dinner. Cruxes: accubueram hora nona I render straight (“I had been at table since the ninth hour”), the ninth hour being the customary Roman dinner start. The verse-quotation cuius ob os Graii ora obvertebant sua I render in its own register — a hexameter-shaped pastiche attributed in antiquity to Ennius, which Paetus has presumably quoted at Cicero before. The closing chiastic epigram — non multi cibi hospitem accipies, multi ioci — I keep in shape: “a guest of little appetite, but plenty of fun.” The si ulla nunc lex est aside is a quiet political crack about Caesar’s sumptuary legislation and the broader question of whether law-as-such still holds.