Cicero to Atticus, written at the Puteolan villa on 17 May 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Puteolano xvi K. Iun. a. 710 (44). The letter opens with a cry of grief over the sudden death of Alexio, Cicero’s physician and friend — “what a wretched business about Alexio!” — carrying the familiar Stoic consolation that we are born on terms which permit us to refuse nothing that can befall a man. The rest is political reconnaissance from Campania on the eve of his departure inland. Antony has slipped past Misenum unseen; but Hirtius, who happened to be at Puteoli reading Atticus’s letter with him, has been pumped both on Antony’s intentions and on the Caesarian camp’s mood.

The closing section is a knot of domestic and political threads characteristic of these letters: young Quintus, Caerellia, an unnamed lady offended at a kindness; the Sophoclean line quid est autem cur ego personatus ambulem? (“why am I to walk about in a mask?”) glancing at the indignity of dissembling in old age; Brutus’s invitation to Rome before the Kalends, which Cicero may accept but finds opaque (“he has consulted his own immortality better than our peace”); the queen — Cleopatra, still in or recently departed from Rome — whose rumour is dying down; and Flamma, on whose behalf Atticus is being pressed. Greek surfaces three times — [Greek: ouden] (“nothing,” Hirtius’s verdict on peace prospects), [Greek: to ek toutou] (“the consequence”), and a half-line of dramatic verse — each a marker of intimacy in the running shorthand of these two old friends.