Cicero to Lentulus Spinther, written from Rome in mid-January 56 BC. A short letter of recommendation for A. Trebonius (not the future tribune of 55 BC, the assassin of Caesar, but a homonymous Roman businessman with substantial interests in the Cilician province). The standard form: long acquaintance, established standing in the province, the particular request that Lentulus confirm a previous decree of T. Ampius (governor of Cilicia 58 BC), and the closing line that sets the gauge — treat him so that he may understand my commendation has been no ordinary one. The letter sits between the two large political dispatches Fam. 1.1 (Ides of January) and Fam. 1.2 (17 January) on the Egyptian question, a reminder that the same hand was, every day, also turning out the patronage paperwork that kept the network running.