Cicero to his wife Terentia, written from Brundisium on the sixth day before the Ides of Quintilis 47 BC — 10 July (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Brundisi vi Id.\ Quint.\ a.\ 707 (47)), the day after Fam.\ 14.10 and continuing the same business in different words. A previous letter, now lost, had told Terentia plainly to send Dolabella notice of divorce on Tullia’s behalf; this letter revises the instruction.

One paragraph, deeply unhappy. Dolabella is Caesar’s tribune of the plebs in Rome and is leading the noisy debt-relief agitation of that summer. Cicero, in Brundisium, has no current intelligence on what “that fellow” can presently command or how the mob now stands; he therefore loosens the order. If Dolabella is dangerous when crossed, Terentia should hold off — though, Cicero adds with a flicker of hope, the initiative for the break may come from Dolabella anyway. The decision, finally, is left to her: she will judge the whole as it stands, and what in these most wretched circumstances seems least wretched, that she will do. The repeated superlative miserrimis / minime miserum is the heart of the letter — there is no good course, only a least bad one.