Cicero to L. Valerius the jurist, written from Rome late in 54 BC (Perseus dateline “ex a. 700 (54)” = end of year). The letter is one section: a teasing, very short recall-summons to a friend who has been spending too long in the provinces. The Lentulus referenced is P. Lentulus Spinther proconsul of Cilicia (Cicero’s correspondent of Fam. 1.1–1.7), to whom Cicero has, on Valerius’s behalf, written thanks.

The body is the comic-rhetorical mode of the letters to friends not currently embroiled in politics: the playful “audacity instead of wisdom” framing of the opening — i.e., I will speak boldly because the times demand it; the double charge from the home-comers, that Valerius is either haughty when he says nothing, or insulting when he answers badly; the wish to “joke face to face,” the close on the Ulysses-recognition gag — “if you come there, you, like Ulysses, will recognize none of your own.” The line is a glance at the Odyssean homecoming: Odysseus, returning to Ithaca after twenty years, was not recognized by his own people. Apulia, in Valerius’s case, has perhaps been the posting; his Roman friends will go on without him if he delays.

The recipient is identified in the heading as iurisconsultus (jurist) — one of the practical legal experts, in the line of Q. Mucius Scaevola the augur and Trebatius. The closing is the small Ciceronian intimacy addressed to a man of his own profession.