Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the seventh day before the Ides of March 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano vii Id.\ Mart.\ a.\ 705 (49)). Two days after the short note of 9.2. Cicero is still at Formiae, watching the road, this time with one specific data-point to chase: Domitius’s son passed through the day before on his way to his mother at Naples, and when Cicero’s slave Dionysius questioned him closely the boy said his father was near the City — not, as Cicero had heard, set out for Pompey or for Spain.

Section 1 turns this fragment of intelligence into the strategic question: if Domitius is still on Italian soil, that implies Pompey himself does not think an exit from Italy easy, with the peninsula held end to end by arms and garrisons, and in winter on top of everything. The Lower Sea is unusable in this season; the Upper Sea is all that remains, and the land road to it is cut off. Atticus is asked to confirm what Domitius and Lentulus are doing. Section 2 is the daily entry on Brundisium: nothing has come, today is the seventh day before the Ides, by Cicero’s reckoning Caesar reached Brundisium today or yesterday. Postumus thinks Pompey has already crossed and means to follow at his heels; Cicero doubts he will find the sailors — but Postumus’s confidence rests on a rumour, that Caesar’s generosity has reached the ship-owners. The letter ends with the by now ritual line: he cannot go on much longer in the dark.