Cicero to Lentulus Spinther, written from Rome before dawn on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of February (17 January) 56 BC, four days after Fam. 1.1. The dispatch follows the Senate from the Ides into the next session: the Bibulus motion (three legates), the Hortensius motion (Lentulus without an army), the Volcacius motion (Pompey). The procedural move that broke the day was the demand to divide Bibulus’s motion — the religious half (the Sibyl: no army) was assented to as inevitable, the three-legates half voted down. With Hortensius’s motion next on the table, the tribune Lupus, having previously moved Pompey, claimed precedence in calling the division. The consuls let the day run out without forcing the issue; they wanted Bibulus’s opinion to stand. Cicero’s private take on Pompey is the central note — “when I hear him alone, I plainly clear him of all suspicion of grasping; but when I see his intimates, I see clearly that this whole business has long been corrupted by certain men, the king himself and his counsellors not unwilling.” The closing §4 reports what Cicero counts as the day’s gain: a senatus auctoritas (intercession by Cato and Caninius notwithstanding) which forecloses any popular legislation without breaking auspices, laws, or peace. The letter is the clearest single statement of how the senatorial centre is holding by procedure — religion, the auspices, the proxies of Cato and Hortensius — against a Pompey who in private talks like a friend and in his entourage acts like a rival.