Cicero to Atticus, written at Antium on 10 June 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Antiati v aut iv Id. Iun. a. 710 (44), the 9th or 10th. Two days after the Antium council, Cicero is still on the coast and tying up the threads of that meeting for Atticus. Buthrotum — the old Epirote town where Atticus held land and was trying to head off a colonial settlement of Caesarian veterans — has been spared, at least for the moment, which is the day’s one piece of unambiguously good news. Tiro has been sent to Dolabella with the letter Atticus asked for. The verdict on the conspirators is already written out elsewhere, but Cicero restates it for clarity: Cassius, having spurned Sicily, expects Servilia to get the grain-commission revoked; Brutus, very gravely (Cicero reaches for the Greek kai mala semnōs) is bent on Asia and has begun collecting ships. The games will go on at Rome under Brutus’s name in his absence.

The second section steps from immediate politics to the question of who will be left to do anything. Lucius Antonius (the consul’s brother and tribune) has written generously and tells Cicero to be at ease; one favour from a Caesarian, perhaps a second on the way. Then the Greek tag from tragedy, One of the Bruti bears the blame for this — Decimus Brutus, who let Antony live — and the first considered sketch of Octavian in the Ciceronian corpus. Cicero has now seen the young nineteen-year-old at Astura: ability, spirit, sympathy for the hērōes of the Ides. What weight to give his youth, his adoptive name, his Caesarian inheritance, and the people putting ideas into his head (katēchēsei) — this needs careful thought. The stepfather (L. Marcius Philippus) thinks nothing of him. Still, the young man should be cultivated — if only to prise him away from Antony. C. Claudius Marcellus is doing well by him, if (the text is uncertain here, two daggered words) he is putting our young man through his paces for us. He distrusts Pansa and Hirtius. A good nature, Cicero closes in Greek — if it lasts.