Cicero to Atticus, a short note written from Pompey’s camp on the Ides of Quintilis 48 BC — 15 July (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in castris Pompei Id.\ Quint.\ a.\ 706 (48)). The letter dates from the very last days before Pharsalus (9 August), and Cicero is writing as one trapped inside a cause he no longer believes in. The household business is dispatched first: a courier has come from his agent Isidorus with two further letters; the estates have not been sold, so Atticus is asked to keep them solvent in the meantime, and the Frusinate property, if he lives to enjoy it, will suit him well.

The body of the letter is the apology for not writing. He has nothing to say worth a letter, “given that I can approve neither what is happening to me nor what is being done” — one of the bitterest lines he ever sets down about the Pompeian camp. He would rather, he says, speak with Atticus face to face one day than carry on by letter. Meanwhile he protects Atticus’s interests as best he can “with these people” (apud hos: the Pompeian high command); the rest the bearer Celer will report aloud. He closes by noting that he has so far ducked every assignment, the more readily because nothing was being done in any way that suited him or his situation. Within a month Pompey will be dead and Cicero free of the dilemma.