Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the evening of the eighth or the morning of the ninth of February 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. in Formiano vi Id. Febr. vesperi aut v Id. mane a. 705 (49)). The same day as Ad Atticum 7.21, hours later: Cicero has made it back from Cales to his villa on the coast, and the news has caught up with him.

The first sentence is the war reduced to a map: pedem in Italia video nullum esse qui non in istius potestate sit — “not a foot of ground in Italy that is not in that man’s power.” Caesar’s speed is incredible; Pompey is unreachable; the question of bloodshed (caedem) is real not because Caesar would benefit from it but because Cicero can see at whose direction Caesar will act. The second section is purely the private quid agam: by what road, by what sea is he to follow a man whose whereabouts he does not know? Section 2 also carries a corrupt clause (the daggers stand for the manuscripts’ recte sit censeo cedendum de oppidis iis egeo consili); the rendering above reads “I think the right course is to give way; about whether to leave the towns I need counsel,” which is one of the standard reconstructions.