Cicero to C. Scribonius Curio, written from Rome on 7 November 53 BC (the manuscripts give only the year, Scr. Romae a. 701; the conventional date follows the standard chronology). The occasion is the death of the elder Curio, C. Scribonius Curio (consul 76 BC), the young man’s father, who had died at Rome while Curio was still abroad on his return journey from Asia. The note is a single short paragraph and performs the smallest possible Roman consolatio: an elegant compliment to the dead (he would have outdone all the world in fortune had he only lived to see his son once more), a brief pious wish that the gods bless the patrimony Curio now inherits, and a quiet relocation of patronage in Cicero’s own person — the father had been a great witness to Cicero’s love for the son, but the friendship needs no witness, and Curio will find Cicero himself as devoted to him as the father was.

The political subtext is heavy. The elder Curio had been one of Cicero’s most prominent senatorial defenders during the exile of 58–57; his death now removes from the young Curio’s life the conservative father who had largely held him to the boni, and Cicero is the obvious replacement auctor on offer. The letter is at once a courtesy and a quiet bid, written in the same November that follows the spring’s larger appeal of Fam 2.6 (Milo’s consulship) and the autumn’s gentler counsel of Fam 2.1 (the reminder of debts). Within months Curio would be back in Rome, the inheritance in hand, and on the path that would take him through Clodius’ murder, the Milo trial, and his sale to Caesar.