Cicero to P. Lentulus Spinther, proconsul of Cilicia, written from Rome in March 56 BC. The shortest of the Lentulus Spinther sequence (Fam.\ 1.1–1.6) and the closing pendant: the Egyptian commission — the question of whether Lentulus, as governor of the province, would receive the senatorial charge of restoring Ptolemy Auletes to the throne of Egypt — has by this date effectively collapsed. The 8 February riot at the Milo contio (Fam.\ 1.5b, Q.\ fr.\ 2.3) has shown that Pompey will not press the cause. The whole state of the affair Cicero leaves to Pollio (Asinius Pollio, the future historian, then a young man in his twenties, here in his earliest appearance in the Ciceronian correspondence as a courier-cum-witness who has “presided over” the business at Rome).

The body of the letter is consolation. Cicero’s own exile, returned from now four months, supplies the model: “the recollection of my own times consoles me, the image of which I see in your affairs.” The advice to “show yourself the man whom from your tender fingernails I have known” borrows the Greek tag — ek hap\=al\=on onuch\=on — and the closing assurance is in the formal style of patronage: “every highest zeal and service from me; I shall not disappoint your expectation.” The letter is the bridge between the dense early-56 BC sequence (Fam.\ 1.1–1.5b) and the rest of the year, in which the Egyptian question recedes and Lentulus’s correspondent at Rome turns to other business: the Luca compact, the post-Luca about-face, the great political-letter arc of mid-56 BC.