Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the day before the Ides of March 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano prid.\ Id.\ Mart.\ a.\ 705 (49)). A short note answering a short letter just delivered after dinner by Atticus’s slave Statius. The Torquatus brothers — Lucius and Aulus — have both already gone. The crown sent by the Reatines (a Sabine town under Cicero’s patronage) reads to him as the first sign of proscription seed being sown in Sabine country. Many senators are reported at Rome, and Cicero cannot work out why they have come out of hiding.

The second section turns to the question that has dominated the correspondence for weeks: Caesar is expected at Formiae in eight days. Cicero reaches for Homer’s Odyssey — “Mentor, how am I to go up to him, how am I to . . .”\ [Greek: M\’entor, p\^os t’ \’ar’ \’i\=o, p\^os t’ \’ar], Telemachus to Athena in the likeness of Mentor before facing Nestor — to register, with the Greek line broken off where the hexameter would continue, the difficulty of the upcoming interview. He has thought over no matter harder; he will not be caught, in misfortune, unprepared. The letter closes on Atticus’s quartan fever: yesterday, he reckons, was the day of the attack.