Cicero to Atticus, written at the Puteolan villa on 4 November 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Puteolano prid. Non. Nov. a. 710 (44). A very short note, two days after 16.8 and still on the same crisis. Octavian has now sent two letters in one day, pressing Cicero to come to Rome at once and to act through the Senate; Cicero demurs — the Senate cannot meet before January — and hedges (skēptomai, “I plead an excuse”): he distrusts the boy’s youth, does not know his mind, will do nothing without Atticus’s friend Pansa, and fears that Antony may simply prove the stronger.

And yet the recruitment is moving in the open: Octavian is enrolling at Capua, counting out the cash; Varro disapproves, Cicero does not. The letter ends in two short strokes — “already, already I see war,” and a complaint that his own courier has come back from Rome on the Kalends without a letter from Atticus.