Cicero to Atticus, written at Rome around October 59 BC. The letter is the closing piece of Ad Atticum 2, and Cicero’s last surviving letter before the Clodian crisis breaks open. Two characters dominate §1: Varro, whom Cicero is courting (see the contemporary Att. 2.21–2.24, where Varro recurs as one of the bulwarks Cicero is counting on for the contest with Clodius), and Hortensius (“Hortalus”), Cicero’s ancient rival at the bar and now co-defender, with the report that Hortensius in the Pro Flacco (mid-59 BC, see the preceding entry in this volume) had lifted Cicero’s praises to the stars when he spoke of Flaccus’s praetorship and “that time of the Allobroges” — Hortensius covering the whole 5 December narrative as a way of defending the consular against the implicit charge of the trial. Two Greek tags: [Greek: helikta kai oudhen hugies], “tortuous and not at all sound,” of Varro; and [Greek: tas t\=on krat\=ount\=on \=eth\=e ph\=erein], “to bear with the manners of the powerful,” Cicero’s working maxim of the year.

§2 closes the book with the standard appeal: Atticus is on his way; come and free me of trouble or share it. Of the commonwealth: nothing more desperate; of those who hold it: nothing in greater hatred. The next surviving letters — if the editorial dating is right — are the exile letters of 58 BC, opening with Att. 3.1 from Cicero in flight or already in flight from Rome.