Cicero to his wife Terentia, written from Brundisium in the second half of December 48 BC. The manuscript dateline (Scr. Brundisi a. 706 (48) circ. xl i K. Ian.) is corrupt — “xl i” is impossible as a Roman date numeral — and is most plausibly read as circ. xi K. Ian. (approximately 22 December) or circ. xvi K. Ian. (approximately 17 December); either way, the letter belongs to the depths of Cicero’s Brundisium winter, the same dark window as the great catastrophe-letters to Atticus (Att. 11.7–11.9).

The letter is six lines. Pharsalus has been lost; Pompey is dead in Egypt; Cicero, having accepted Caesar’s permission to return to Italy, is now stranded at Brundisium without the political cover of a return to Rome, estranged from his brother Quintus, broken in spirit, and unable to bring himself to write at length even to his wife. The standard Roman epistolary opening — si vales, habetur est, valeo, “if you are well, it is well; I am well” — is here all but the whole letter. He has nothing to say. Lepta and Trebatius, the bearers, can describe his condition; he can only ask her to mind her own health and Tullia’s. The silence of the page is the content.