Cicero to Atticus, written from Brundisium around the Kalends of September 47 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Brundisi circ.\ K.\ Sept., ut videtur, a.\ 707 (47)). A short, querulous note in two sections. A packet has come through from Balbus’s courier, bringing letters from Quintus to Caesar attacking Cicero — “that whole style of letter,” as Cicero calls it, which by now is so notorious that it would have told no one anything new. Atticus has been worried that Quintus’s offensive may rebound on Quintus himself, and has asked Cicero to intercede on his brother’s behalf; Cicero replies that Caesar would not even allow a petition about the man, and the brutal addendum is that he himself counts for so little that his interventions, when granted at all, “carry no weight.”

The second paragraph is Brundisium logistics at the end of a hot summer. Sulla and Messalla, the two senatorial intermediaries on whom the camp’s pay strike depends, are expected tomorrow on their way to Caesar — the troops have driven them out and will not move without their stipendium. Caesar therefore will come this way after all, though slowly, “spending many days in one town,” and Pharnaces’ war in Pontus will impose further delay. Cicero’s body is failing under the climate; he asks Atticus, for once, to break a long silence and actually advise him — should he send his excuses by Sulla’s party and move closer himself? The plea “to see you” closes the letter, with a brief instruction about the will. Two short cruxes ( oppidum, and the Greek-like Pharnaces clause) are preserved as \ markers; the sense given is the most natural reading.