Cicero to Atticus, written at the Puteolan villa on the Nones of November (5 November) 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in Puteolano Non. Nov. a. 710 (44). The longest letter of this November cluster, and politically the most consequential. Cicero is still on the coast, catching the eastward post each morning, and the letter answers two from Atticus at once — one from the Kalends, the other from the day before.

The opening is literary. “Nostrum opus” is the Second Philippic, which Cicero has finished in draft and sent to Atticus for marking up; the “little vermilion-wax marks” are Atticus’s annotations, and Cicero has been dreading them. Atticus has approved, even culled anthē — “flowers,” purple passages — from it; Cicero will soften the personal attack on the cuckolded Antony (the gibe about Fadia, made without “the Lucilian phallus”) so as not to wound Sicca and Septimia, but he will not retract the politics. He longs for “the day when that speech shall roam at large so freely that it makes its way even into Sicca’s house”; for the moment it is a pamphlet circulating only among trusted hands, to be read to Sextus Peducaeus, with Calenus and Calvena (Matius) kept out.

The middle of the letter turns to the philosophical work that will become De Officiis. Cicero is using Panaetius as his base, has finished two books on the topic Panaetius treated, and is waiting on Athenodorus Calvus to send him the headings of Posidonius’s treatment of the third question — the conflict of the honourable with the useful — which Panaetius announced but never wrote. The title is fixed: kathēkon renders “officium,” and the fuller title is De Officiis; the dedication will be to his son.

Section 6 is the heart of the letter. Octavian is writing to Cicero daily, calling him to Capua, urging him to “save the republic a second time,” demanding he come to Rome at once. Cicero quotes Iliad 7.93 — “they were ashamed to refuse” — on his own ambivalence. He sees what Octavian is doing clearly: the boy is acting with real energy, the country towns adore him (a remarkable welcome at Cales, an exhortation at Teanum), the march into Samnium is under way — but “he is plainly a boy,” he supposes a senate will simply assemble when he asks, and Cicero asks the obvious question: who will come? On account of all this, Cicero has resolved to be at Rome sooner than planned. The closing sections shift back to small business: the bond on the day before the Ides, letters to be carried to the Sicilian cities, the Lepidian holidays, Quintus’s affection for someone Atticus likes less, and a kiss for the bright small Attica.