Cicero to Atticus, written from the Cuman villa on the same day as Att.\ 10.9 — the fifth day before the Nones of May 49 BC, 3 May (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Cumano v Non.\ Mai.\ a.\ 705 (49)). The letter is built around the text of a reply Cicero has just received from Mark Antony, who has been put in charge of the Italian coast and given Caesar’s instruction to let no one out. Cicero had written repeatedly, disclaiming any move against Caesar’s interests, naming his son-in-law Dolabella, naming the old friendship, saying he could have gone with Pompey if he wished and that for himself he simply wanted to be away from the lictors he was being made to attend. The Latin opens with a flash of bitter self-rebuke (me caecum qui haec ante non viderim): Cicero now sees that he has been answered with deliberate, smiling refusal. The Greek tag [Greek: parainetik\=os] — “in an exhortative manner” — is dropped in as hostile shorthand: that is, with the tone of a friend giving advice, but a refusal all the same. Section 2 is the quoted letter itself, the only stretch in Cicero’s correspondence in which Mark Antony speaks directly: courteous, irreproachable, and entirely closing the door. The middle is its sting: he has no authority to let Cicero go, only the Caesarian remit to keep everyone in Italy; if Cicero wants to leave, he must write to Caesar.

Section 3 is the response in code: habes [Greek: skytal\=en Lak\=onik\=en] — “there is your Spartan scytale,” the cipher staff. Antony’s courtesy reads, in cipher, as a refusal; Cicero will take the meeting (Antony is due that very evening), will make a show of unhurried compliance, will say he will write to Caesar — and meanwhile, in secret, with the fewest possible companions, will slip out. The allusive Greek line [Greek: sunes ho toi leg\=o] (“mark what I am telling you”) is a Pindaric tag dropped in to flag what is being said beneath the surface. Two daggered cruxes in the manuscript (audeam, carti) sit inside this same sentence; the run of the thought is intact even where the text is corrupt. Section 4 turns to Atticus’s health (the strangury, treat it while it is still at its [Greek: arch\=e]) and to news out of Massilia. Section 5 is the unforgettable image of Antony on the move with the actress Cytheris in an open litter like a wife, seven more linked litters of mistresses and boyfriends behind: “See what a shameful death we are perishing by” — and the resolve, even in a skiff if no ship can be had, to tear free. Section 6 returns one last time to the long anxiety about his nephew Quintus: a remarkable wit but a still-unformed character [Greek: an\=ethopoi\=eton], turned away from his own people; the character must be tended to.