To him Pompey was the greatest political power as yet extant in Rome; but he was beginning to believe that Pompey would be untrue to him.

When he had sent to Pompey a long account of the grand doings of his Consulship, Pompey had replied with faintest praises.

He had rejected the overtures of the Triumvirate.

In the last letter to Atticus in the year before, written in August,[272] he had declared that the Republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this pass--meaning the Triumvirate--were hostile; but, for himself, he was confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men around him.

There is a letter to his brother written in November, the next letter in the collection, in which he says that Pompey and Caesar promise him everything.