Cicero to Atticus, written from Tarentum on the eighteenth of May 51 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Tarenti xiv K. Iun. a. 703). Cicero is on his outward journey to the province of Cilicia, of which he is now proconsul — a posting he had not sought, foisted on him by the lottery procedures that followed the Lex Pompeia de provinciis of 52 BC. He has reached the heel of Italy and there encountered Pompey, who happens to be in residence at his estate near Tarentum; the encounter, which Cicero presents as incidental, is in fact a small political event — Pompey is the senior figure in the state and Cicero is his man on the eastern road — and he uses the few days of waiting for his legate Pomptinus to take soundings about how the Senate sees his commission.

The letter is short, distracted, and businesslike. Cicero is uncertain whether Atticus is still in Rome or has already set out for Epirus; he writes anyway, out of the prudential rule of the late letters that any open channel must be used. The one piece of substance — “leave the business of Caesar’s debt settled” — is the loan that Cicero made (or that he allowed his brother Quintus to take on his behalf) from Caesar before departure: an obligation that will hang over the correspondence of the next eighteen months and which the political earthquake of 49 BC will turn into a liability of a different order. Here it is still simply a piece of housekeeping to be cleared before Atticus sails.