Cicero to Atticus, written from his Formian villa on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January, 19 December 50 BC (Perseus dateline: Scr. in Formiano xiv K. Ian. a. 704 (50)). The day after Att 7.5. The letter is two short sections: a one-line opening insisting that the daily ritual of correspondence be kept up even when there is nothing new to say, and then a single dense paragraph on the political question that is crowding out everything else.

Section 2 is one of the clearest statements anywhere in the correspondence of Cicero’s bind between private judgement and public alignment with Pompey. He has canvassed opinion and finds that almost no one favors fighting the war that Caesar’s demands are about to force. The Homeric tag ou gar dē tode meizon epi kakon, “for surely this evil that is on us now is no greater” (from Iliad 22.106 in Cicero’s adaptation), points back to the prior concessions — the prorogations, the law allowing Caesar to stand for the consulship in absence — that have armed Caesar against the senatorial order. The summary is the famous formulation: “my view will not be the same as what I shall say.” He will vote with Pompey because not to do so would be wrong in him praeter ceteros, beyond all others; but the view he will not utter is that war must be averted at any cost.