Cicero to Atticus, written on the road around the Nones of April 58 BC. The shortest letter of the exile correspondence, and one of the most desolate. Cicero, having left Rome shortly after Clodius’s first bill on March 19, has turned south through Lucania toward Vibo (modern Vibo Valentia in the toe of Italy). The opening line — utinam illum diem videam cum tibi agam gratias quod me vivere coegisti (“may I see the day when I shall thank you for forcing me to live”) — is the consular’s first recorded thought of suicide; the rest of the exile correspondence will return to the same note. The pretext for turning his route to Vibo: it is closer to Sicily, where M. Vergilius the praetor, an old comrade, would in fact refuse him entry within days; the letter assumes Atticus will come.