person
Quintus Pompeius Bithynicus
Bithynicus
also: Bithynicus, Bithynicum
A friend and correspondent of Cicero; Cicero mentions writing to him in a Tusculan letter to Tiro of 44 BC. Probably Q. Pompeius Bithynicus, later governor of Sicily; the identification is plausible but not certain.
Reading notes
- Ad Familiares 6.16 §1 go back to the beginnings of that friendship in our fathers
Roman amicitia was a formal tie that could be inherited across generations; Bithynicus implies his own standing with Cicero is strong enough to rest on personal grounds alone, not requiring him to invoke the inherited obligation (hereditary paternal friendship) as a weaker suppliant might.
- Ad Familiares 6.17 §1 the promise you make in your letter
Bithynicus had promised (in the letter preserved as Fam. 6.16) to come to Rome and live near Cicero if the political situation improved; Cicero treats this as a binding promissum and lists it as one of his personal reasons to want republican restoration.
- Ad Familiares 6.17 §2 the regard your father, a most distinguished man, had for me
Cicero alludes to the elder Bithynicus's friendship with him — probably a Pompeian connection — while noting that his own bond with the younger man surpasses any mere inherited obligation; the compliment ('most distinguished man') is a standard Roman obituary formula for a dead patron.