Cicero to Appius Claudius Pulcher, written from camp on the last day of August 51 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. in castris prid. K. Sept. a. 703). Cicero has by now crossed into his province, held court at Laodicea, marched east to join the army, and broken camp at Iconium to push on through Cappadocia. Appius, the outgoing proconsul, was supposed to wait for him so that the handover might be done in person and within the thirty days the Lex Cornelia (a law fixing the term within which a proconsul must leave his province after his successor’s arrival) allowed. He has not waited; he has gone to Tarsus, at the far end of the province, and gone on holding court, issuing decrees, sitting in judgement — the kind of business a man who knew his successor was almost on him would normally lay aside.

The letter is the longest and most direct of the series. Cicero is now openly remonstrating with Appius, while preserving the form of the friendship. The structure is a piece of forensic accountancy — cum meum factum cum tuo comparo, “when I compare my own conduct with yours.” Sections 1–2 set out what Cicero himself did: he asked Appius’s freedman Phania at Brundisium where Appius wanted him to come first, was told Side; he met L. Clodius at Corcyra, who redirected him to Laodicea; he changed his plan accordingly. Section 3 turns the page: considera nunc vicissim tuum, “now consider in turn your own.” Appius has gone in the wrong direction; ignorant observers would read his conduct as that of a man avoiding the meeting. Section 4 raises the rumour that Appius is still actively governing — holding court, deciding cases — after his successor is in the country, which is the substantive complaint underneath the personal one. Section 5 names the operational grievance: three cohorts at full strength are detached from Cicero’s already-thin army and Cicero does not know where they are; he has sent D. Antonius to recover them. Section 6 closes by giving Appius, with pointed precision, every datum he needs to set up a meeting within the legal term — the date of Cicero’s entry into the province, the route through Cappadocia, the date of breaking camp at Iconium. The courtesy is intact; the patience is not. The reference to “ill-wishers” (malevoli homines) in section 4 is the polite shape into which Cicero packs the suspicion that the rumours about Appius’s conduct are in fact true.