Cicero to Pompey in the East, written at Rome in April 62 BC. Pompey, having ended the Mithridatic war and the eastern reorganization, has just sent home official dispatches and a private letter to Cicero. The official news has cast down “your old enemies, your new friends” — Cicero’s wry phrase for those who, hostile to Pompey in former years, had hoped during Pompey’s absence in the east to inherit his standing at Rome — since the dispatches show no aggressive intent. The private letter, however, has not given Cicero what he had wanted: a word of congratulation on his consulship. Cicero, in the third paragraph, sets that down openly: he expected such a word, he has not had it (“I think it has been passed over by you because you feared to offend any man’s mind”), and he proposes the parallel under which their friendship should go forward — “you, far greater than Africanus was; I, not much less than Laelius was.” The letter is famously proud, and Pompey on his return read it with the cool distance Cicero feared. The Cicero–Pompey dance of the 50s starts here.