Cicero to Atticus, written from Pompey’s camp on the Ides of June 48 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in castris Pompei i Id.\ Iun.\ a.\ 706 (48)). The letter is sent five and a half weeks before Pharsalus. The courier has been held for days because Cicero is waiting for news that does not come, and is at last dispatched chiefly to answer Atticus on the question Atticus had raised: what is to be done at the Kalends of Quintilis (the first of July), when — it appears — a large payment falls due. Cicero weighs the two heavy options: the danger of so large a sum committed at so precarious a moment, or, with the political outcome still undecided, the abruptio (the “breaking off”) that Atticus has put to him. He hands the decision over to Atticus’s care and to Tullia’s wishes, regretting that he did not deliberate face to face about his survival and fortunes while time still allowed.

Atticus has tried to console him with the observation that no peculiar misfortune of his own hangs over him in the common ruin; Cicero answers that there are many particular troubles he could most easily have avoided, but that they will be less if Atticus continues to manage them. His own ready cash is with Egnatius, where it had better stay — the present situation cannot last long, so he will soon know what is most needed. He himself is in want of everything, the more so because the man whose camp he shares (Pompey) is also in straits: Cicero has lent him a large sum, expecting that the loan, once affairs were settled, would be a credit to him. He ends as he began the book: in all things, look after Tullia, “the one for whose sake you know me to be most miserable.” Dated and place-marked in the closing line: “On the Ides of June, from the camp.”