Cicero to Atticus, written at Formiae around the fifth day before the Kalends of May (27 April) 59 BC. The letter that Cicero had written from Tres Tabernae (the substance of which is now Att 2.12) was returned to his own house by the slave who had been given it, and Cicero is sending Atticus the original. The body of the letter is the famous travel report: at Rome the political crisis is muted, but in the country it is not. “If you come into this Telepylus, this Laestrygonian land — I mean Formiae — what an uproar of men, how angry the spirits, what hatred of our friend Magnus, whose cognomen together with that of Crassus the Rich grows old.” The Homeric tag (the land of the giants in Odyssey 10) is for the roar of the Italians along the Appian Way as the agrarian crisis hits the country. Cicero closes on the resolve: “Wherefore, believe me, let us philosophize.”