Cicero to Appius Claudius Pulcher, written from Brundisium on or about the 4th of June 51 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Brundisi prid. Non. aut ipsis Non. Iun. a. 703). Cicero is about to cross the Adriatic on his way out to Cilicia; Appius is the outgoing proconsul whom he will succeed there. The exchange is awkward in the way that handovers between high-magnates often were: Appius has been an active governor of the kind Cicero himself disapproves of — extortionate by report, slow to vacate, sensitive about his standing — and the two men, college-fellows in the augurate and political associates of long standing, must now manage a transition that will inevitably expose the differences in their administration.

The tone of the letter is studiously gracious. Cicero acknowledges three named messengers of Appius’s goodwill, picks out Appius’s recent gift of a book on augural law as a particular pleasure, and triangulates the relationship through their shared family connections (Pompey, father-in-law of Appius’s daughter; Brutus, Appius’s son-in-law). The protestations are warmer than the underlying business: Cicero is, in effect, refusing to commit to anything definite until he has heard, through L. Clodius, what Appius actually wants, while keeping the public courtesies polished. The correspondence with Appius, gathered in book 3 of the Ad Familiares, will run on through the year in much this register — the polite cooling of a relationship that survives but no longer fully trusts.