Marcus to Quintus, written at Rome around 27 July 54 BC. Quintus is in Gaul on Caesar’s staff — the proconsul’s legate, posted there since the spring — and is weighing whether to come home at the date he had named or stay on with the army to keep clearing his debts. The letter opens with a self-deprecating joke about Marcus’s notoriously illegible last note: nothing was wrong, he says, he simply uses whatever pen comes to hand. The brother had taken the scrawl as a sign of distraction or anger and asked. The warmth of the deflection is the warmth of the relationship.

The substance is a political reading and a piece of financial intelligence. On the political side, Marcus forecasts the year ahead as calm, or at worst easily defended: the daily crowds about his house, the noise in the forum, the demonstrations at the theatre all favour him, and his standing with both Caesar and Pompey covers him against any sudden furor amentis hominis — unnamed but transparently Clodius. He therefore advises Quintus to do what is best for his estate rather than rush back for fraternity’s sake; the [Greek: amphilaphian] — the abundance of money that staff service under Caesar was now generating — is worth the wait. The closing paragraph is the news from the consular and tribunician elections: a corrupt syndicate of Memmius, the sitting consuls, and Domitius has driven the interest rate from a third to two-thirds per cent on the Ides of July, with bids of ten million sesterces being floated to be announced at the praerogativa; Scaurus alone is said to outbid them, Messala has wilted. The single bright spot is the extraordinary pact among the tribunician candidates: each has deposited 500,000 sesterces with Cato as surety to canvass under his terms, on penalty of his judgement. The remark that, if it holds, Cato will have done more than all the laws and all the courts is the heart of the letter.