Cicero to Atticus, dictated from the carriage on the march through Phrygia in mid-August 51 BC — the Perseus dateline places the writing between the fourth day before the Ides of August and the day before the Ides. Cicero is two days out from the army camp, having just received a packet from Rome that contained no letter from Atticus — a silence he prefers to blame on Philotimus rather than on his friend.

The letter is a tour of his anxieties at speed. The administration of the province is, by the testimony of his own staff, immaculate: not a copper farthing is being spent on anyone, and the legates, tribunes, and prefects — Lepta in particular — are “sharing his passion for glory” (symphilodoxousin). The two boys, his son and his nephew, have been placed for the summer with the younger Deiotarus, just styled king by the Senate. Sestius has written about “my private and gravest concern” — the matter of Tullia’s marriage, of which Atticus knows the full shape and Cicero will not name in a despatch. Hortensius, who at Cumae had pledged to defend the one-year principle, is reported by Sestius to have said something about prorogation; Cicero begs Atticus to fortify the position, citing Scaevola, who governed Asia for only nine months. The closing paragraph asks Atticus to tell Brutus that his Appius-like flight from the new governor’s path has been not at all pretty: Cicero has work enough healing the wounds his predecessor left, and would rather not have a friend add to them.