Cicero to Atticus, written at Formiae in mid-May 59 BC. The most candid sentence in the corpus on Pompey: “He is fitting up a tyranny by all admission” (homologou- men\=os tyrannida syskeuazetai), the verbatim Greek phrase that locks the diagnosis. The marriage in question (§1) is the marriage of Pompey to Caesar’s daughter Julia, recently celebrated; the Campanian land is the second agrarian distribution of April 59; the pouring out of money is the lavish public expenditure of the triumvirs.

The famous middle paragraph (§2) is the small philosophical joke: it is no longer hope but indifference (adiaphoria) that consoles Cicero — indifference, the technical Stoic term for not being moved by externals. The thread of vanity that runs through Cicero (“not unfond of glory”) is now turned into a pleasure of its own: “it used to sting me that the deeds of Sampsiceramus to his country might in six hundred years’ time appear greater than ours; of this care at any rate I am now free.” Pompey’s standing has fallen so far that even Curio looks tall against him.

The closing paragraph asks Atticus to fish out of Theophanes (Pompey’s intimate) what disposition the “Arabarch” — a fresh Pompey-nickname, after the revenue-officials of Egypt — holds toward Cicero, “in a tutelary way” (kata to k\=edemonikon): the informal counsel of the Greek code-talk runs through the letter.