Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the Ides of May 709 AUC — 15 May 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae Id.\ Mai.\ a.\ 709 (45)). The shortest letter of the sequence and the hinge of the northward move: Cicero resolves to leave Astura, stop at Lanuvium, and press on to the Tusculanum. The reasoning is bleak and exact — either the estate is to be abandoned for good (the grief will follow him anywhere, only better hidden), or there is no point waiting ten years to face it.

The second paragraph turns the same logic on his reading: he is half-afraid the books are making him softer, not harder. The line that closes the first section — exculto enim animo nihil agreste, nihil inhumanum est, “to a cultivated mind nothing is uncouth, nothing inhuman” — is the kind of philosophical maxim he has been writing his way into all spring, and a small private answer to the ferocity of his own grief. The brief closing arranges the meeting: two letters will do, he will come out to Atticus if needed.