Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the eighth day before the Kalends of April 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano viii K.\ Apr.\ a.\ 705 (49)). Cicero is still at Formiae, two or three days from the famous meeting with Caesar; the news of the day is military. A letter from Quintus Pedius has arrived from Capua, enclosing a dispatch of Caesar’s from the lines at Brundisium: the harbour-mouth is being choked by twin moles thrown out from either horn of the bay, the work is heavy because of the depth of the water, but the aim is plain — either to force Pompey to ferry the troops he still holds in Brundisium across at once, or to shut him in. Before the day is out a second letter from Lepta brings the resolution: Pompey embarked on the Ides of March, and Caesar will be at Capua on the twenty-sixth.

The middle section turns to a second-hand report of Caesar’s table-talk. A certain Baebius, lately come from Curio, has put about that Caesar means to avenge Cnaeus Carbo and Marcus Brutus and the other victims of Sulla’s proscriptions, with Pompey cast as Sulla’s partner; that Curio under Caesar is the new Sulla; that the men recalled from exile by Caesar are no traitors; that Milo was driven out by violence; that he will lay hands on no one save those who bear arms against him. The report is given with Cicero’s usual asseverative [Greek: authentik\=os] — “straight from the author’s mouth” — and his usual scepticism: where, he asks, is the peace which Balbus had said Caesar was on the rack for? Two daggered cruxes in the transmitted text have been kept as obeli; the report’s drift is plain even where its grammar is not.