Cicero to his household, written from Dyrrhachium on the day before the Ides of July 48 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Dyrrhach i Id. Quint. a. 706 (48); the body, written at the moment of despatch, gives “Idib. Quint.”). The salutation is the bare Suis salutem dicit — “to his own, greetings” — not to Terentia by name, and the plural verbs in the body (videatis, scitis) confirm a collective address. The letter is the last surviving piece written from Pompey’s camp before Pharsalus (9 August); within a month the campaign that has held Cicero in Epirus through the spring will be lost on the plain in Thessaly.

The content is purely practical and entirely financial. A property has failed to sell; Cicero asks his household to find some other way to satisfy a creditor whose identity they already know. He acknowledges, with characteristic dryness, that Tullia’s thanks for some unspecified kindness are well earned. And Pollex — a slave courier of his, whose tardiness keeps recurring in these months — is to be got on the road at once. The register is hurried and elliptical: he has nothing to say, no one to send letters by, and is making this one do the work of a tally.