P. Cornelius Dolabella to Cicero, written from Caesar’s camp around the beginning of June 48 BC — Perseus: in castris Caesaris circ.~in.~m.~Iun.~a.~706 (48). Although the letter sits inside Book 9 of the Ad Familiares (which is otherwise Cicero’s own letters to Varro, Paetus, and Dolabella from 46–45 BC), it belongs chronologically several years earlier and is one of the very few surviving letters to Cicero in the collection. Dolabella was at this point Cicero’s son-in-law (married to Tullia) and was serving with Caesar in the Pharsalus campaign; Cicero himself was with Pompey’s force at Dyrrachium. The letter was written while Pompey was walled in by Caesar’s lines there — circumvallato nunc denique — and before Pharsalus broke open the war on 9 August.

The voice is a younger man’s voice, urgent and direct, frankly pressing his older father-in-law to look to his own safety: come over to Caesar, or at the very least retreat into quiet — to Athens, perhaps, or any neutral city. The argument is built on a cool list of Pompey’s losses (driven from Italy, the Spains lost, his veteran army taken, now walled in) and on the political maxim of the closing of section~2 — ubi nunc est res p., ibi simus — “let us be where the commonwealth now is, rather than, while we follow the old one, be in none at all.” Dolabella couches it all in the language of affection (mi Cicero, mi iucundissime Cicero) and offers to fly to Cicero’s side if he will name a refuge. The opening formula S.~v.~g.~v. is the stock epistolary salutation si vales, gaudeo, valeo expanded in the translation; the news of Tullia and Terentia at the head of the letter is a husband’s and a son-in-law’s gesture before the political pressure begins.