Cicero to Atticus, written at the Puteolan villa on 11 July 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Puteolano v Id. Quint. a. 710 (44), three days after 16.1. Cicero is still at Puteoli, still preparing to embark, still being hounded by creditors and family business while the political situation reshapes itself daily. The first paragraphs are financial: Hortensius (the orator’s son and Cicero’s debtor in reverse direction here) is being shameless about a payment; Publilius — Cicero’s former brother-in-law from the brief marriage to Publilia — is owed money out of the Tullia estate settlement, and Cicero has already paid down 200,000 sesterces of a 400,000 outstanding to make the dissolution go through. Atticus is being asked to govern Cicero’s affairs at Rome with full authority, even, if necessary, to liquidate property to keep Cicero’s good name intact.

The political paragraphs surround Brutus’s games. Brutus, as praetor in absentia, has staged the Ludi Apollinares; the play put on was Accius’s Tereus, with lines about tyranny that the audience evidently applauded. Cicero is glad of the gesture but bitterly remarks that the Roman people are “spending their hands not in defending the commonwealth but in applauding,” and breaks into a verse cap: provided they suffer something, let them suffer anything at all. The decision to sail is being praised by everyone, and Cicero — “thrust out with a pitchfork” — is now set on Brundisium rather than Puteoli, having decided the legions are easier to avoid than the pirates. Cassius has arrived at Naples with his little squadron. The letter closes with the year’s two philosophical projects: the (now lost) Heracleides treatise to be tackled if Brundisium goes well, and the De Gloria, just sent off to Atticus with instructions for Salvius to read excerpts at dinners — only after a warm audience has been secured.