Cicero to Atticus, written at the Puteolan villa on 14 May 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Puteolano prid. Id. Mai. a. 710 (44). A brisk note dashed off because Pilia has warned him that couriers are leaving for Rome on the Ides. Cicero gives notice that he leaves Puteoli for Arpinum on 17 May, but wants first to “scent out” (odorari diligentius) what is coming. His own pupil — that is, Hirtius, due at dinner that very day — is openly in love with the man Brutus wounded, and the Caesarian camp’s working premise ([Greek: hupothesis]) has been laid bare: a great man was murdered, the state thrown into confusion, his clemency was his ruin; everything will be undone as soon as the Liberators stop being feared.

Section 2 voices for the first time, in this correspondence, what will become a recurring fear: that Sextus Pompeius may come from Spain with a strong army ([Greek: eulogon], “reasonable” enough to expect), and that war will then certainly come. Cicero — with three densely packed Greek words within a single line: [Greek: phainoprosop\=eteon] (“one must put on a brave face”), [Greek: iteon] (“one must go”), and the Sophoclean tag [Greek: allois en esthlois tond’ ap\=othountai psogon] (a fragment of Sophocles’ lost Erigone, applied to the Liberators) — weighs and rejects the camp option for himself. The Ides of March, he admits, no longer console him as they did: they “contain a great flaw,” namely Antony left alive. He may travel on his votive embassy yet; he is being warned by many not to attend the Senate on the Kalends of June, when troops are said to be secretly mustered against the very men who will be safer anywhere than there.