M. Caelius Rufus to Cicero, written from Rome at the end of April or beginning of May 50 BC (Perseus: Scr. Romae ex. m. Apr. aut in. Mai. a. 704 (50)). Cicero’s year in Cilicia is almost over; he is openly counting the days until he can leave the province, and Caelius is counting them along with him. The opening confesses an anxiety as characteristic of Caelius as the gossip that follows it — “the more successfully you have so far managed things there, the more I am tortured by the prospect of a Parthian war” — afraid that some fresh alarm in the east will pin Cicero down beyond the year and ruin the campaign he is already counting upon. The letter is short and scribbled in haste, slipped to a courier of the publicani who was leaving that minute; Caelius had sent the fuller weekly dispatch via Cicero’s own freedman the day before.

All Caelius has time for, then, is the salacious gleanings of the city. Young Cornificius has betrothed himself to Orestilla’s daughter; Paula Valeria, sister of Triarius, has divorced her husband for no reason on the very day he was due home from his province, in order to marry D. Junius Brutus (the future tyrannicide). Servius Ocella has been caught in flagrante twice in three days — with, Caelius hints, a woman whose identity is too good for the page, and which an enquiring imperator may, if he likes, extract from each Roman in turn on his return. The letter is the purest vein of Caelian gossip-letter-writing in the collection: short, friend-to-friend, with a sting of mock- prurience and not a word of public business.