Cicero to Atticus, written from Laterium, the country place of his brother Quintus, on the third day before the Nones of April 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Laterio Quinti fratris iii Non.\ Apr.\ a.\ 705 (49)). Cicero has paused on his way from Formiae: Atticus’s letter has reached him, and he says he has “breathed a little” for the first time since the catastrophe began. The pretext for the relief is Atticus’s report that Sextus Peducaeus the younger approves Cicero’s firmness — which lets Cicero feel as if confirmed by the elder Sextus, whom he is moved to quote in Greek hexameter from Hector’s last words in the Iliad: “not without a struggle and inglorious, but having done some great thing for men of after-time to learn of.” The body of the letter is taken up with the same paralysis as the preceding weeks — what to do if Caesar’s circle invite him to a peace-council, what to do if he is dispatched as envoy, whether to be absent “from this side and from that.” Solon’s law penalising the non-aligned in civil strife is quoted, and at once set aside.

Section 3 carries a textual crux, marked here with daggers as in the standard text. The Greek tags throng the letter: [Greek: t\^on politik\=ot\’at\=on skemm\’at\=on] (“of the most properly political questions”) flags the dilemma about attending a tyrant’s council as a topos of philosophical-political deliberation; [Greek: ekph\=on\=esis hup\’ereu] records Atticus’s habit of breaking in with a “splendid!” of approval; [Greek: \’al\=e] (“wandering, drifting”) names the present condition as a kind of living death; [Greek: politeut\’eon] (“one must play the citizen”) sets up the antithesis that governs section 4 — either freely among the wicked or, with danger, with the honest. The mention of Flavius receiving a legion and Sicily, of Trebatius as “an honest man and citizen,” and of an unnamed peacemaker who has sent his son to Brundisium (almost certainly L.\ Caesar) flesh out a letter whose surface is anxious news from a brother’s villa and whose substance is the recurring question of what political action is even possible.