Cicero to Q. Ligarius, written at Rome on the fifth day before the kalends of the first intercalary month of 46 BC — Perseus: Romae a.~d.~v K. intercal.~priores a.~708 (46) — one of the special intercalary months Caesar inserted that year before the Julian calendar reform took effect. Ligarius, a former legate in Africa, had stayed with the Pompeian army at Thapsus, and a private prosecutor, Q. Tubero, had brought against him before Caesar a charge that would amount to treason. The trial was approaching, and Cicero was preparing the defence — the speech that survives as the Pro Ligario. This is the letter he sent in the meantime to Ligarius himself.

The piece is brief, and it is among the gravest of the letters of 46. Cicero begins by confessing the temperament he always confesses — a man more afraid of bad outcomes than hopeful of good ones — and then sets that temperament against what he himself has seen and heard. Going to Caesar at dawn, with the brothers and kinsmen of Ligarius prostrate at the dictator’s feet, he read in Caesar’s expression and bearing more than in his words that the matter was settled. The closing tricolon — si turbidissima sapienter ferebas, tranquilliora laete feras — is the heart of the letter: bear the calmer waters gladly, having borne the wildest waters wisely. The promise to keep entreating not only Caesar but all Caesar’s friends is what Cicero would in fact do on the day of the trial, with the speech that turned the case.