Marcus Cicero the younger from Athens to Tiro, mid-to-late September 44 BC, per the Perseus dateline inter med. m. Sept. et Oct. a.~710 (44). The sender is the great Cicero’s son, then in his early twenties and studying philosophy at Athens under Cratippus; the salutation CICERO F. TIRONI SVO S. identifies him as the son (filius). The note is a brief, slightly chiding reply to a letter from Tiro that had begged off for lack of time.

The young Cicero’s voice here is studious-anxious and a little performatively grown-up — the same register that runs through his longer Athens letter (Fam. 16.21). News of the political crisis at home reaches him by rumour and by messenger, and his father writes faithfully about his own goodwill toward him, but it is Tiro’s letters about anything at all that he most wants.