Cicero from Arpinum to Tiro at Rome, a little after 11 November 44 BC, per the Perseus dateline paulo post a.~d. iii Id. Nov.~a.~710 (44). Tiro is in the city managing the household accounts — creditors named, an instalment due on the Kalends of January, an assignment to be settled — and is also Cicero’s chief political informant in a tense autumn: Octavian gathering forces, Antony manoeuvring, and Cicero himself “barely holding himself back from rushing to town.”

The letter pairs the two sides of the Tironian correspondence at once: business in clipped, almost dictated sentences in §1, followed by the eager rush of political questions in §2. The Greek proverb prora et puppis (“stem and stern,” the be-all and end-all) for the reason he sent Tiro to Rome is characteristic of these private notes.