Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos to Cicero, written from Hither Spain in late 56 BC. Nepos is the only correspondent in this batch whose letter is in the corpus though not in Cicero’s own hand: the answer to which it is itself the reply, Fam. 5.4 of spring 57 BC, is also preserved. Nepos was tribune in 62 BC — the year of the Catilinarian debate, when he had blocked Cicero’s farewell speech as consul — but had been protected during his Clodian troubles of 60–58 BC by Cicero’s restraint, and then in 57 BC, as consul, had withdrawn his opposition to Cicero’s recall. In late 56 he is governor of Hither Spain.

The “most insufferable of men” (homo importunissimus) with the contiones is Clodius, whose tribunate of 58 BC had taken Cicero into exile and whose career through 56 was the running thread of the political fight; the “twice” Nepos has saved him against his will is the brother sticking up for the brother-in-law (Clodius’s sister Clodia was Nepos’s wife’s sister) and perhaps also as consul shielding him from Senate proceedings. The “role exchanged” (commutata persona) is the formal acknowledgement that the bond Cicero had claimed when proposing the senatorial reconciliation in Fam. 5.4 (“te mihi fratris loco esse duco”) is now reciprocated. Lollius is Nepos’s man in Rome, charged with the provincial accounts.