Cicero to Atticus, written from a country villa in December 60 BC, on the eve of Caesar’s consulship. Three pieces. First (§1) the news that the elder Lucius Valerius (the man whose patron in 59 will be Cicero in Pro Flacco’s circle) has been acquitted with Hortensius defending — a trial allegedly bought by Pompey’s man Aulus’s son Afranius. Second (§2) the famous architectural joke: the architect Cyrus has built narrow windows into Cicero’s house, and Atticus has objected; Cicero defends Cyrus by quoting the architect’s own explanation, parodied with a small geometrical proof in Greek (“let A be the eye, B the visible object, D and E the rays”) — the cultivated bilingualism of the corpus at its best.

Third (§3–4) the great political question of January 59 BC: how should Cicero respond to the new consul Caesar’s agrarian bill? Three options — brave resistance (full of praise but with struggle); quiet withdrawal (“not unlike going off to Solonium or Antium” to one of the country villas); positive support, which is what Caesar expects (the visit from Cornelius Balbus, Caesar’s intimate, is reported here for the first time, as the visible point of the new combination of Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus). What is on the table is a friendship with all three, peace with the multitude, “the leisure of old age”; but Cicero is held back by the famous closing sentence of his own consular epic —“Meanwhile keep, and increase, the courses you sought from your youth, and as consul, by virtue and spirit” — and by Hector’s tag from the Iliad: “one omen is best, to fight for one’s country.” The answer is left for the walks at the forthcoming Compitalia (the cross-road festival), where Atticus is invited.