Cicero (with his son Marcus, jointly named in the salutation) to Tiro, written from Brundisium on the fourth day before the Kalends of December 50 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Brundisi iv K. Dec. a. 704 (50)). The day after the Atticus letter from the same harbour, with Tiro still left behind sick at Patrae. The opening is a day-by-day log of the crossing — Patrae to Leucas, Leucas to Actium, the storm, Corcyra, Cassiope, the run across to Hydrus on a gentle south wind, the fourth-hour arrival at Brundisium and Terentia walking into the town beside them.

The second half is what the log is in service of. A letter from Tiro dated the Ides of November has at last reached him by Plancius’s slave, with Asclapo the doctor’s plain assurance of recovery. The fatherly anxiety modulates into instruction: don’t push it; you were too modest at Lyson’s concert and risked a fourth-week relapse; Curius has orders to see the doctor paid; a horse and mule are waiting for you at Brundisium when you come. And the closing imperative is the one that recurs in every letter of this series — do not sail rashly. Travel with Mescinius if you can, with someone of standing if you cannot, and present yourself to us safe and sound. The intimacy of address (mi Tiro), the worry, and the practical disposition all hold steady from the Cilician correspondence into the new chapter that is about to open.