Cicero to Atticus, written at the Tusculan villa on 22 June 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Tusculano x K. Quint. a. 710 (44). The opening is acid family comedy. Quintus the elder is exulting over a letter from his son — who has resurfaced after the recent rupture — in which the young man claims he wanted to flee to Brutus precisely because he had refused Antony’s commission to help make him dictator and seize a garrison; that he refused only to spare his father’s feelings; that this is why Antony has turned hostile; that he “pulled himself together” and patched things up again. Statius, the elder Quintus’s freedman, adds that young Quintus now wants to live with his father. Cicero’s exclamation — “did you ever know a more thorough fraud than that fellow?” — speaks for itself. The two Quinti have been running through a long series of these performances all year.

The second section turns to routine matters. Atticus has rightly suspended decision on a piece of business involving one Canus; Cicero approves the holdup. He had not yet been alerted to a problem about some accounts and had assumed everything restored without compromise. The courier schedule is in Atticus’s hands; he is busy. Xeno’s affair is in good order. Tiro reports that Atticus now disfavours Brundisium as an embarkation point and is raising some concern about the soldiers there; Cicero had already settled on Hydruntum (Otranto), put off by Atticus’s earlier remark about the five-hour crossing from Brundisium — though, he notes, the alternative route is itself a serious voyage. He is pressing on, so as to leave before Sextus Pompeius arrives.