Cicero to L. Munatius Plancus, written from Rome between 19 September and 5 October 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae inter xiii K. et iii Non. Oct. a. 710 (44). A short note explaining an absence: Plancus, as consul-designate for 42 BC, has business pending in the Senate (honori tuo — “for your election” / “for the honor due you”), and Cicero, who would normally have supported him in person, is staying away. The reason is bluntly stated: “no one with a free way of thinking on public affairs can spend time there without danger, in such utter impunity of swords — nor does it seem consistent with our dignity to deliver an opinion on the republic in a place where armed men hear me better, and at closer range, than the senators do.” This is the same calculation that underlies Cicero’s repeated absences from Antony’s Senate meetings in the autumn of 44, including the famous one of 1 September that gave rise to the First Philippic.

Cicero promises that in any private business of Plancus’s he will be the same as ever, and that even in public affairs he will not be wanting where his presence is genuinely needed, “not even at risk to myself”; but in matters that can be carried through without him, he asks Plancus to allow him to weigh his own safety and standing. The bargain is exactly the one Cicero is making with all his correspondents this autumn: full effort, on his own terms, from outside the senate-chamber.