Cicero to Atticus, written from the Cuman villa on the day before the Ides of May 49 BC — 14 May (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Cumano prid.\ Id.\ Mai.\ a.\ 705 (49)). The letter opens on a fresh private wound. Dionysius — the freedman tutor of the boys — has just come early in the morning. Atticus’s earlier letter, received at Arpinum, had given Cicero to expect that Dionysius would arrive ready to do what Cicero wished, namely to go with him; instead, after a very few words, Dionysius asked to be excused, pleading his own entangled affairs. Cicero’s reaction is sharp and unguarded: he understood that Dionysius had looked down on his fortunes; among the greatest griefs of these days, he reckons this one. The grace note is for Atticus’s sake — “I hope he may be a friend to you. In wishing this for you, I am wishing you happiness; for then it will last just so long.”

The rest of the letter is operational. Cicero hopes his plan to slip away to Pompey will pass without danger; he has dissembled and trusts he is not being watched too sharply. Cato has sailed from Syracuse on 24 April, having given up a Sicily he could have held; Cotta is rumoured to hold Sardinia (“oh, the shame of Cato” if so). On 13 May Cicero went to his Pompeian villa to lessen suspicion. There the centurions of the three cohorts at Pompeii sent Ninnius to say they wished to hand themselves and the town over to him; he left the villa before dawn so as not to be seen. Three cohorts were too few, the apparatus too small, and the overture (as he reflected on a Caelian letter from Atticus that had just reached him at Cumae) might well have been a trap. Hortensius has called on Terentia in his absence and spoken honourably of him — a contrast sharpened in the closing thrust at Antony, whose litter, with an actress inside, is carried in state among his lictors. The letter ends as the previous one did, with a nudge to Atticus, now clear of the quartan and a head-cold besides, to show himself vigorous in Greece and to keep the letters coming meanwhile.