Cicero to Atticus from the Formian villa, 6 July 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Formiano prid. Non. Quint. a. 710 (44). (The “prict” in the fetched dateline is an OCR bleed for “prid.”; the date is fixed internally by section 3, where Cicero says his Formian dinner-guests reported seeing Plancus “III Non.” = 5 July, “the day before I was writing this.”) The letter is in three sections and was written on the journey south: Cicero is at his Formian estate, between the Arpinum letters (15.26–15.28) and the planned arrival at Puteoli on the Nones.

Section 1 is a string of replies to Atticus’s previous letter and a forwarding of Brutus’s — “good gods, what helplessness” [Greek: am\=echania]: the perplexity of the assassin party, who can neither stay nor leave. Section 2 brings Quintus the younger into the picture: the wretched nephew is rushing all the way to Puteoli to make a show of patriotism, on two pretexts, both suspect — a reconciliation with his uncle and an alliance with Brutus and Cassius. The interview with Quintus’s father over a possible marriage to a Iulia of the Othones is sketched with sardonic precision; Cicero suspects the boy is fantasising. Section 3 is a postscript opened after the letter was sealed: Formian dinner-guests have reported that Plancus, the agent of the Buthrotian colonists whose case has bedevilled the year, has been thrown out of Buthrotum stripped of his phalerae (the medallions of a soldier’s harness). Cicero’s “Well done!” (macte!) is unadulterated.