Cicero to Atticus, written from Epirus some little while after the Nones of February 48 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Epiro aliquanto post Non.\ Febr., ut videtur, a.\ 706 (48)). Atticus’s letter has reached Cicero on the fourth of February, and on that same day Cicero has formally entered upon an inheritance left to him by will — the standard ritual of cretio hereditatis. One anxiety, at least, is eased: that inheritance may shore up his credit and his good name, though he knows Atticus would have defended both from his own pocket if no will had ever come.

The rest is about Tullia. The dowry promised to Dolabella has not been paid in full, the proceeds of the estates are vanishing into expenses Cicero cannot trace, and he has only now learnt that sixty thousand sesterces have been deducted from the dowry without his knowledge — a deduction he would never have allowed. He begs Atticus to take up the whole business and protect her “out of my resources, if I have any, and out of yours so far as it gives you no trouble.” Chrysippus has brought him a rumour that the house on the Palatine, too, is being taken from him; if it is true, no man has yet been more wretched. He has collected nearly half the Asian money and judges it safer where it now sits than with the publicani; the dispatch of Atticus’s courier was delayed because no opportunity offered. He has received seventy thousand sesterces and the clothing he needed, and asks Atticus to write covering letters in his name to whichever of his friends he sees fit — without seal or hand, since the watchers set on him in the camp would not allow them.