Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the third day before the Nones of February in 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. in Formiano iii Non. Febr. a. 705 (49)). The same day as Att.~7.18 but a different drafting moment: a fresh packet of letters has just arrived and Cicero is setting out, mid-sentence, for Capua.

The hinge is the word ecce — “and now, look.” Cicero had stayed up late composing a hopeful letter (quam eram elucubratus, “the one I had burned the midnight oil over”) — and held it back. Then the day’s post comes in: an empty letter from Atticus, and dispatches from Philotimus and Furnius, and one from Curio to Furnius in which Curio openly mocks Lucius Caesar’s peace embassy. Hope evaporates in a sentence. Plane oppressi videmur nec quid consili capiam scio — “we seem plainly overwhelmed, nor do I know what plan to take up.” He is not worried for himself; for the boys, he has no plan. He was setting out for Capua, he says, in mid-sentence as he writes — the literal flight from the desk.