Cicero to Atticus, written at Brundisium 30 April 58 BC, as the wind held him on the Italian shore for the crossing. Atticus has finally written, and twice within three days. The first half is logistical, but with a memorable admission within it: odi celebritatem, fugio homines, lucem aspicere vix possum — “I hate crowds, I shun men, I can scarcely look on the daylight.” The plan to settle in Atticus’s Epirote estate is rejected as out of the way; Athens would be better, but optimate exiles already there make it suspect. The destination is undetermined, with Cyzicus the working answer.

§2 is the moment of greatest darkness in the surviving correspondence. Atticus has been the one keeping Cicero alive: “Your calling me back to life accomplishes the one thing, that I keep my hands from myself; the other you cannot accomplish, that I should not be sorry for my decision and my life.” The most honourable moment for suicide — when the bill was first carried, with himself as victim — has been let go; what remains is “not for medicine but for the end of pain.” §3 closes with the question that runs through the next two years: where he will see Quintus, returning from Asia, and “how I shall let him go again.” Quintus, of course, was as exposed as Cicero himself: brother of the proscribed.