Cicero to Atticus, written from Brundisium on the day before the Ides of May 47 BC — 14 May (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Brundisi prid.\ Id.\ Mai.\ a.\ 707 (47)). The colophon at the end of the letter (Pr.\ Idus Maias) confirms the date. Atticus has explained, in good faith, why he cannot come down to Brundisium just now; Cicero accepts the reasons but presses the question that they leave hanging — what is he himself to do? The geopolitical map he sketches in 1 is the whole of his predicament. Caesar is bogged down in the Alexandrine war and apparently too embarrassed even to write home about it; the Pompeians from Africa look poised to come over; the men of the Achaian party are about to leave Asia, either for Africa to join them or for some neutral place. Cicero, with perhaps one other man, has nowhere to go: no return to the Pompeians, no real hope from the Caesarians.

The middle of the letter is the most exposed self-accusation in Book 11. Quintus has written again, more bitterly than before, and Quintus’s son with an extraordinary hatred; every evil, Cicero says, that can be invented is pressing him. But all of it is easier to bear than the pain of having done wrong — of having returned to Italy and accepted Caesar’s protection — which is at its height (maximus) and unending (aeternus). Every other man’s case, he argues, has an outlet: prisoners, the cut-off, even those who went to Fufius (Caesar’s lieutenant at Patrae) of their own free will can at worst be called timid; many more will be received back by the Pompeians on any terms they like. Only his own fault, and perhaps Laelius’s, cannot be undone — and even the small comfort of Cassius’s parallel choice has just collapsed, since Cassius is now said to have changed his plan of joining Caesar at Alexandria. The closing two sections turn back to the practical question — should he creep nearer to Rome in secret, or cross the sea? — and to the Fufidian inheritance, where Cicero suspects his coheirs are stalling because they reckon his cause is doomed. One short textual crux in 3 is preserved as a \ marker; the sense given is the most natural reading. “Aesopus’s son” is the disreputable boy of the famous tragic actor Clodius Aesopus, of whom Cicero had reluctantly taken charge.