Cicero to Atticus, written from the camp at Cybistra in the far reach of Cappadocia on the 22nd of September 51 BC (Perseus dateline: Scr. in castris ad Cybistra x K. Oct. a. 703 (51)). It is the brief follow-up to 5.18, sent off the moment a courier from Rome arrived with a letter from Atticus that had been forty-seven days on the road. Cicero had just sealed the long autograph letter (5.18) when Apella’s man came in; this is the postscript he could not bear not to add.

The three short sections move through the standard private rhythms of the correspondence: an acknowledgement of the route and timing of Atticus’s letter, a note about an outstanding debt entrusted to the household manager Philotimus, a paternal-uncle’s greeting to Atticus’s little daughter (whom Cicero has never met, and now will not see for another year), and a closing Greek tag — τὸ διαφέρει τοῦ φθονεῖν (“rejoicing is a different thing from envying”) — thrown in to make the point that yes, he really is glad Atticus’s nephew’s uncle’s rival was defeated at the polls; Atticus had teased him, “I don’t believe you.” The letter is small but situated: Cicero is in a Roman war-camp at the foot of the Taurus, the Parthians have crossed the Euphrates, Pomptinus has not yet arrived, and the post from Rome has just caught him up.