Formiae

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 1.4 §3 they are at the Formian villa

  Cicero owned several country houses; here statues await transfer from his villa at Formiae (on the Campanian coast) to the Tusculan one near Rome. Adorning villas with Greek art was a mark of cultivated Roman wealth.

• Ad Atticum 2.13 §2 this Telepylus, this Laestrygonian land

  A Homeric joke: Telepylus, the land of the cannibal Laestrygonians (Odyssey 10), was traditionally identified with Formiae on the coast of Latium. Cicero names his own seaside resort by the grim epithet to mark the savagery of the political talk he hears there.

• Ad Atticum 7.23 §1 these are with us, that is, at the Formian villa

  Cicero's seaside villa at Formiae on the Campanian coast was a gathering point in Feb 49 for hesitant senators (Manius Lepidus, Lucius Torquatus, the tribune C. Cassius) weighing whether to follow Pompey out of Italy.

• Ad Atticum 9.1 §3 lingering at the Formian villa

  Formiae, on the coast of Latium between Rome and Naples, was the site of one of Cicero's villas and his base during these weeks of indecision. Its position on the Appian Way let him gather news quickly while remaining outside Rome.

• Ad Atticum 9.7 §2 stay in Formiae

  Formiae, on the coast of Latium between Rome and Campania, was Cicero's favourite seaside villa and his base throughout the crisis of early 49 BC. Staying there let him avoid both Pompey's camp and a too-conspicuous meeting with the advancing Caesar.

• Ad Atticum 15.29 §3 the people from Formiae who had been dining with me

  Formiae was a coastal town in Latium where Cicero owned a villa; these dinner-guests from Formiae bring fresh gossip about Plancus and the Buthrotum affair.

• Ad Familiares 8.17 §1 at Formiae, when you set off to join Pompey

  Cicero's villa at Formiae on the Latian coast was his base of indecision in 49 BC; from there he finally sailed in June to join Pompey's camp in Greece, the choice this whole letter laments.

• Ad Familiares 16.10 §1 at the Formian villa

  Cicero's villa at Formiae on the coast of Latium, between Rome and Campania, a regular stopping place on his journeys.