Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on either 28 or 29 May 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano v aut iv K. Iun. a. 710 (44). (The works.yaml entry takes the later of the two days, 29 May; the dateline itself is indeterminate.) A very short acknowledgement: a single paragraph, with no Perseus section divisions. Cicero thanks Atticus for forwarded letters, singling out one from “our Sextus” — Sextus Pompeius, then in Spain — whose sentiments on the commonwealth and whose style of writing pleased him even before he came to the passage in which he was praised.

The closing sentences turn dismissive on Servius Sulpicius Rufus, “our peacemaker,” who seems to have set off on his embassy in the company of a little clerk and to be afraid of every legal quibble. The figure is technical Roman legal language: ex iure manum consertum is the formula by which two parties to a property dispute laid hands on the thing in question to begin litigation; Cicero says Servius ought to have proceeded not by that initial formal claim but by what comes after — that is, with substance rather than ceremony. The Latin around cum sensus eius de re publica carries a daggered crux in the manuscripts; the sense is preserved.