Cicero from his Tusculan villa to Tiro at Rome, late May 44 BC, just under three months after the Ides. The Perseus dateline gives v K. Iun. a.~710 (44) — 28 May. Tiro is handling Cicero’s affairs in the city: a financial declaration, a contract, a question about old Servilius. The political background is anxious — Antony has been pushing legislation through, Atticus is jumpy on Cicero’s behalf — and Cicero is trying to keep up his “inveterate friendship” with Antony without committing to anything before he can talk to Tiro in person.

The voice is the unguarded private Cicero: a Greek tag about head-colds dropped into a sentence about Balbus, the proverb gonu kn\=em\=es (“the knee is closer than the shin”) for self-interest naturally trumping a friend’s business, and the closing note that he needs Tiro’s conversation to make Lepta’s country fare palatable. Two textual cruxes survive: the corrupt N (a guest’s name lost in the manuscripts) and the obscure rutam puleio at the close, here taken as Lepta’s plain country seasoning that needs Tiro’s wit to improve it.