Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the seventh day before the Kalends of March 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. ut Formiano vii K. Mart., ut videtur, a. 705 (49)). The same day as Ad Atticum 8.5, but the register has nothing of the domestic about it: this is the moment Cicero stops defending Pompey and starts indicting him. Domitius is shut up at Corfinium with his cohorts and Pompey, despite holding thirty cohorts of his own, is not coming to his relief — and Cicero no longer believes he will. Incredibiliter pertimuit, nihil spectat nisi fugam: “He has lost his nerve to an incredible degree; he looks to nothing but flight.”

The hinge of the letter is section 2. Atticus has cited back to Cicero a saying of his own that he would rather be conquered with Pompey than conquer with Caesar’s men — and Cicero now turns that saying inside out. He would still prefer it: but with that Pompey, who once was or seemed to be, not with this Pompey, who flees before he knows from whom or where, who has handed over the cause, has left his country, is leaving Italy. Si malui, contigit, victus sum: “If that was my preference, it has come to pass: I have been conquered.” The short third section drops back into practicalities — travel funds from Philotimus, the public treasury at Moneta (which is paying no one), or, failing that, the Oppii brothers who lodge with Atticus — but the political decision of section 2 is the news of the letter.