Cicero to C. Caelius Caldus, his quaestor for the Cilician year, written in camp in Cilicia on the tenth day before the Kalends of Quintilis (22 June) 50 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. in castris in Cilicia a. d. x K. Quint. a. 704 (50)). The formal opening sets the tone — both correspondents are named with full filiation, M. Tullius M. f. M. n. Cicero imp. writing to C. Coelius L. f. C. n. Caldus q. — the salutation of proconsul to quaestor on first acquaintance.

Caldus had drawn Cicero by lot, and Cicero had been pleased with the assignment; but the young man had been slow to set out, and no word had reached the province about his coming until a letter arrived in camp, dated the tenth day before the Kalends of Quintilis but otherwise without an indication of place, day of despatch, or expected arrival. Cicero now writes back by his own orderlies and lictors to press Caldus to hurry: Cicero’s year is nearly out and he fears he will be gone before Caldus reaches him. The letter is diplomatic in the way an introductory letter must be. Recommendations from Curius and from C. Vergilius have arrived, and weigh with Cicero; but Caldus’s own letter weighs more, and “no quaestor more welcome could have fallen to me.” The closing pledge — that whatever distinctions Cicero confers shall mark the honour of Caldus and of his ancestors — restates the courteous bargain of the proconsul’s year, with one private note of warning embedded in it: Cicero will discharge that obligation the more easily if Caldus reaches him in time.

The text at the head of section 2 carries a crux (quaecumque a me ornamenta ad te proficiscentur); the sense of the period is clear enough.