Cicero to Atticus, written at Rome in Quintilis (July) 59 BC. The dating compresses the political picture of the high triumviral summer. §1 is the social inventory: Cicero is helping Anicatus, Numestius, Caecilius, Varro; Pompey “loves us and holds us dear”; the practical men say beware and not to believe, but Cicero believes him nevertheless. §2 is Clodius’s running threat balanced against Pompey’s protests — “he affirms there is no danger; he swears; he even adds that he himself will be killed by him sooner than I be hurt” — the kind of oath whose later breaking will mark Cicero’s exile.

§3 is the famous turn to allegorical correspondence: “I begin to fear that the very paper may betray us. So hereafter, if I have to write you more, I shall darken it with allegories.” The literal mechanism follows in §4: Cicero will sign as “Laelius” and Atticus as “Atticus,” use no seal and no handwriting. The state “is dying of a certain new disease,” yet without “internecine war” it cannot be resisted. Bibulus, by his publicly posted edicts against the triumvirs, “is in the heavens.” Diodotus, the Stoic philosopher who lived at Cicero’s house and died blind in late 59, has left him a small fortune (HS 10 million).