Cicero to Atticus, written from Arpinum on the fifth day before the Kalends of April 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Arpini v K.\ Apr.\ a.\ 705 (49)). This is one of the most consequential letters in the whole correspondence: Cicero’s eyewitness report, written the same day, of his face-to-face meeting with Caesar at the Formian villa on the eve before. Caesar on his march up from Brundisium had stopped at Formiae; Cicero, who had spent weeks rehearsing the encounter in letter after letter, finally had it; the interview followed two lines of advice Atticus had given — speak so that he should think well of you rather than be grateful, and hold the line against going up to the City — and on both Cicero says he succeeded. He had expected Caesar to be facilem, easy; he found him the opposite (nihil vidi minus, “I have seen no one less so”).

The heart of the letter is the reported exchange in section 1, in which the demand at the centre of the whole correspondence finally crystallises. Caesar wants Cicero to come to Rome and speak in the Senate on the Kalends; Cicero answers that if he comes, he will say things Caesar will not want said — that the Senate does not consent to a crossing into Spain, does not consent to armies being transported into Greece, that he will lament much on Pompey’s behalf. Caesar’s reply — ego vero ista dici nolo, “I will not have such things said” — is the substance of the breach, delivered without ornament. Caesar leaves the room asking that Cicero deliberate; Cicero understands that asking-to-deliberate as a way of seeking an exit. The two part. The letter’s most-quoted line follows: “I take it this man does not love me. But I have loved myself — which has not happened to me for a long while now.” The closing [Greek: katakleis] that Cicero says he almost passed over is Caesar’s parting threat: if my counsels are unavailable he will use whose he can, and stoop to anything.

Section 2 turns to the entourage — the [Greek: n\’ekuia], the “calling-up of the dead,” a tag from Homer that Atticus had used of Caesar’s circle, with the “[Greek: h\=er\=os] Celer” singled out for sarcasm — and to the bitter recognition that the sons of Servius Sulpicius Rufus and of Titinius were in the camps that had Pompey under siege at Brundisium. Section 3 records the day’s itinerary: Caesar going on to Norbanus at the Pedian villa, Cicero turning back inland to Arpinum, where he will give his son the white toga. Section 4 closes on the demand the letter itself is sending up the chain: epistulam et [Greek: politik\=en]!, “a letter — and a political one!” The unbroken Formiae diary of weeks ends here; the next letter is from Arpinum.