Cicero to Atticus, written from his Tusculan villa just after 15 November 55 BC. Dionysius is on hand — the Greek freedman of Atticus’s, tutor to the boys, the same reading-companion who has turned up in the Cumae letters of the spring. Cicero has come up from the bay of Naples and means to be back in the city on 18 November (14 K. Dec.) — forced, he says, by Milo’s wedding, by the prospect of elections, and by the tail-end of senatorial altercations he has been glad to miss. He asks Atticus to write him the political weather: how the consuls are bearing the skylmos — the present harassment — and what comes next. Cicero says he is oxypeinos, sharp-set, and that everything looks suspect.

Section 2 carries the year’s most quoted private remark on Crassus: “o hominem nequam!” — worthless! — delivered in passing on news that Crassus has set out for his Parthian command in his commander’s cloak with less dignity than L. Aemilius Paulus once did before Pydna. Both men were second-time consuls; Paulus carried himself like one. The closing two sentences turn to the books De Oratore, finished now and ready to be copied; the Greek tēn parousan (“the lady present”) is Cicero’s hint to Atticus that Pilia should be at home for the visit, so he does not arrive as a stranger.