Cicero to C. Scribonius Curio, written from Rome in 53 BC (the manuscripts give only the year: Scr. Romae a. 701). The second of the small sub-correspondence with Curio in book 2 of the Familiares, and a notch darker in tone than 2.4. Where the prior letter circled around the impossibility of writing seriously about the commonwealth, this one says outright that affairs at Rome cannot be set down even in a letter — and then, with the same elaborate courtesy, draws Curio’s distance into a kind of consolation: you are away, so you do not see what we see, and meanwhile your reputation rises in the unanimous voice of allies and citizens alike. The compliment is real and the political flattery is plain.

The second section turns the screw. The exspectatio reditus — the extraordinary expectation of Curio’s return — is double-edged: Cicero fears not that Curio’s virtue will fall short of it, but that by the time he arrives there will be nothing left to act on. The state is so weakened, so nearly extinguished (ita sunt omnia debilitata et iam prope exstincta) that even saying so feels unsafe for a letter. The close returns to Curio’s own clausula from 2.4: prepare, rehearse, consider the qualities of the citizen and man who will vindicate the commonwealth, struck down and oppressed, back into its old dignity and freedom. The vocabulary (adflictam et oppressam, veterem dignitatem et libertatem) is the formal language Cicero uses for the republic he believes is dying around him.