Cicero to Atticus, written on 7 April 44 BC at the suburban villa of Gaius Matius outside Rome — Perseus dateline Scr. in suburbano Mati vii Id. Apr. a. 710 (44). This is the earliest surviving private letter from Cicero after the assassination, and its first section is the historic page: Cicero has just called on Matius, the cultivated Caesarian friend of both men, and reports the verdict back to Atticus in three hammered phrases — nihil perditius; explicari rem non posse — nothing more lost; the thing cannot be untangled. “If a mind like his could find no way out, who will find one now?” Matius is grieved; he predicts trouble in Gaul within twenty days; he says nothing matters can go on this way. Cicero’s notice of Oppius at the end (the other great Caesarian intimate, who “says nothing that could offend any decent man”) is the contrast that gives Matius’s gloom its weight.

The second section turns to news from Rome — Sextus Pompeius’s movements, and above all Marcus Brutus, on whose political competence Cicero is already half-suspicious. He copies back to Atticus what Matius reported of Caesar’s own view of Brutus (“whatever he wants, he wants intensely”), together with an overheard remark of Caesar’s about Cicero himself — caught waiting in the antechamber, Caesar joked about Cicero’s evident dislike of him. The register is the intimate, hurried one of the post-Ides retreat: short paratactic sentences, anecdotes set down ut enim quidque succurrit libet scribere (“for I might as well write whatever comes to mind”), and a closing that already sounds like the rhythm of April: equidem nihil intermittam — I shall not let up.