Cicero to L.~Minucius Basilus, written at Rome on the Ides of March 44 BC — the very day Caesar was assassinated in the Curia of Pompey (Perseus dateline: Romae Id.~Mart.~a.~710 (44)). Basilus was one of the conspirators: a former praetor, a nephew (and disinherited heir) of M.~Satrius, and one of the men who stabbed Caesar in the Senate-house. The note is therefore Cicero’s same-day congratulation to a tyrannicide on the deed just done. He was not himself in the conspiracy — the assassins had not trusted him with foreknowledge — but the elation here is unmistakable, and the letter is one of the only contemporary documents we possess written under the immediate impression of the assassination.

The Latin is a single, breathless, tightly chiastic sentence of six clauses: tibi gratulor, mihi gaudeo; te amo, tua tueor; a te amari et quid agas quidque agatur certior fieri volo. “You” and “I” interlock through the first four members, then the closing pair shifts to passive — wanting to be loved by Basilus, wanting to be informed of what he is doing and what is being done generally. “What is being done” (quid agatur) is the careful, deniable formula of a man writing on the day of the assassination by hand of a courier, asking for news he expects to be shattering and good. No content is named; the whole event is held in the gap between the verbs.