Cicero to Atticus, written from the Cuman villa on the eighth day before the Ides of May 49 BC — 8 May (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Cumano viii Id.\ Mai.\ a.\ 705 (49)). Servius Sulpicius Rufus, expected by the Nones (10.9.3) and arrived on the day, called on Cicero the next morning. The interview is a study in disappointment. Cicero opens with one of his sharpest lines on protracted fear: it is a greater evil to dread a thing so long than to suffer it. Servius proves the case. He arrives shaken; he fears nothing that is not worth fearing — Caesar angry with him, Pompey no friend, the victory of either side a horror because of the cruelty of the one and the audacity of the other, and both sides driven by the same fiscal desperation, which can be satisfied only out of private fortunes. He weeps so much that Cicero marvels his tears have not dried up. The eye-trouble (lippitudo) which keeps Cicero from writing in his own hand — a copyist takes this letter — is, by contrast, dry; only the wakeful nights make it worse.

Section 2 asks Atticus for the only kind of consolation that is now any use: not the philosophical sort (id quidem domi est, “that resource is at home”) but news — of Spain, of Marseilles, of the two legions Servius has reports on. Section 3 returns to Servius: their conversation was put off to the next day, but Servius, slow to set out, said he would rather stay in his own little bed whatever should come. He clings firmly to one thing only — if the condemned exiles are restored, he will go into exile himself — and is deaf to Cicero’s arguments that this is already a foregone conclusion. Cicero concludes that Servius is to be kept out of his plan rather than drawn into it, and notes that he will think on Atticus’s warning about Marcus Caelius Rufus.