Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of April 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano xiii K.\ Apr.\ a.\ 705 (49)). Three days have passed since Pompey sailed from Brundisium; the news is now beginning to reach Formiae through travellers, intermediaries, and Caesar’s go-betweens. The letter opens with the sighting of P.\ Cornelius Lentulus Spinther — the consul of 57, Cicero’s recall champion — hiding at Puteoli; he has slipped away from Pompey’s camp and is sending fulsome thanks to Caesar. The middle of the letter records a visit from Matius, Caesar’s level-headed friend, on the Quinquatria of Minerva (19 March); Matius reads Caesar’s letter to Cicero as an overture for peace-broking, and Cicero half-allows himself the hope of [Greek: politik\’on opus] — a piece of statesmanship to set against the wreck. Section numbering jumps from 2 to 4 in the Perseus text; the standard scholarly numeration is preserved.

The letter is dense with Greek. Atticus’s tag [Greek: n\’ekuia] — the underworld visitation of Odyssey 11 — has become the shorthand between them for the company Pompey now keeps; Cicero echoes it back. Crassipes, Cicero’s former son-in-law, has come from Brundisium with reports of the Pompeian camp’s tone: pure proscription-talk, pure Sulla, hatred of the optimates and the municipalities, with Theophanes of Mytilene loudest of all. The closing paragraph is the bleakest: the men in whom safety must lie — Scipio Nasica, Faustus Sulla, Scribonius Libo — are reported to have their creditors meeting in town. Pompey is now dreaming of Egypt, of Arabia Felix [Greek: euda\’imona], of Mesopotamia, and has written off Spain. Cicero closes by sending Atticus a copy of his own letter to Caesar.