Cicero to Q. Cornificius, governor of Old Africa, from Rome on 19 March 43 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae xiv K. Apr. a. 711 (43). The letter is one of the more important in the Cornificius file: a retrospective of Cicero’s whole campaign against Antonius, written in the mood after Hirtius has marched out for Mutina and the political wind in Rome has turned squarely against the Antonian camp. Cicero opens with a piece of Senate news — on the Quinquatrus, the feast of Minerva, a complimentary decree was passed in Cornificius’s honour, to the discomfiture of two of his enemies, the “Minotaur” Calvisius and Taurus — and ties it elegantly to the day’s omen: Minerva’s statue, dislodged by a whirlwind, was on the same day voted restored.

The body of the letter is the autobiography of the Philippics in miniature. Cicero rehearses his 20 December 44 BC motion in the Senate (“the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January”) as the foundation laying of the new state; his goading of Antonius into the fury that drove him out of Rome; the storm that turned his own ship back from his Greek flight (the Etesian winds, like good citizens, refused to escort me as I deserted the state); and the celebrated and unflattering claim that the young Caesar Octavianus caught Antonius “belching and retching” in his “nets.” He closes with a Terence quotation (Andria 189) and a sustained ship-of-state metaphor: there is now one ship for all good men, and Cornificius is invited to come aboard — and indeed to the stern.