Cicero to Atticus, written from Rome before the middle of April 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Romae ante med.\ m.\ Apr.\ a.\ 708 (46)). A short two-section letter passing on the city’s rumour traffic about the African campaign. Murcus is reported drowned, Asinius taken alive, fifty ships blown into Utica by a contrary wind, Pompey (the younger) missing and on Paciaecus’s word never in the Balearics at all — but, Cicero notes, no story has a vouching source. The dispatch closes with the surreal counterpoint that, while these rumours fly, Hirtius and that set are away at the eight-day games at Praeneste.

2 sharpens the tone. Balbus is building (the news of Thapsus has not yet reached Rome, or has not yet been believed); the Greek ti gar autoi melei? — “what is it to him?” — is dropped in dry. For a man who pursues not what is right but what is pleasant, hasn’t he bebiotai, lived his life out already? The closing lines push Atticus to come back: now is the time to unfold the probl\=ema (whatever it is they have been debating, perhaps a financial proposal of Atticus’s), and Cicero will set a day with Tyrannio at the same time.