Cicero to Atticus, written from Brundisium on the third day before the Nones of June 47 BC — 3 June. The Perseus dateline header is corrupt (Scr.\ Brundisi.\ iii Nou.\ luot.\ a.\ 707 (47)), and the works.yaml entry carries a year-precision placeholder of -0047-01-25; but the letter’s own colophon at the close of 5 preserves a clean iii Non.\ Iun., and the content — Caesar still detained at Alexandria, peace still unsealed, the Pompeians of Asia and Achaia now angling for Fufius’s pardon — fits the beginning of June 47 BC well. The year-placeholder in the manifest should be corrected to a day-precision of -0047-06-03.

The letter opens with cold reading of an official document. Atticus has sent on a letter purporting to come from Caesar; Cicero finds it thinly written and full of marks against its authenticity — marks Atticus has noticed too. On the question of going to meet Caesar he will follow Atticus’s advice, but he believes none of the sustaining rumours: there is no real report of Caesar’s return, the men from Asia hear nothing of peace, and the blows have fallen one after another — in Asia, in Illyricum, in the Cassius affair, at Alexandria itself, at Rome, and in Italy. Even if Caesar does come back, Cicero thinks the war will be over before he arrives. The middle of the letter is the same self-accusation as in 11.15, now sharpened: the Achaian Pompeians who had once shared his fear and his resolution are now suing Fufius for pardon, and so the delay at Alexandria has set their cause right and undone his. The closing sections turn to private business — Quintus’s renewed hostility, a stray sentence from some friend at Patrae (Patris) about being not unwilling to be there given everything, news passed via the freedman Cephalio who has been held up for months by the weather; and a delicate request, last of all, that Atticus and Camillus together advise Terentia on her will, since Philotimus has reported (vix credibile) that she is acting wickedly in matters of debt. Cicero asks Atticus to write back even if he can think of nothing: that very silence will count for him as despair confirmed.