Ad Atticum 3.4
Ad Atticum 3.4
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written 13 April 58 BC on the road between Vibo and Brundisium. The piece records the moment Cicero learnt of the second Clodian bill: the exile-distance set at five hundred miles from Italy, and being there not allowed (so the parsing of the clause). Either Sicily or Malta would now have been a crime; even Sicca, the host at Vibo, would have been penalized for harbouring him. Cicero turns toward Brundisium and the crossing into Greece. The closing line: me, mi Pomponi, valde paenitet vivere; qua in re apud me tu plurimum valuisti — “I am bitterly sorry I am alive; in which matter you have weighed most with me” (an explicit statement that it was Atticus’s argument that had kept Cicero from suicide, set out fully at Att. 3.3).