Cicero to C. Trebatius Testa, written at Rome at the end of June 54 BC. Trebatius is in Caesar’s camp in Gaul (and on the British expedition by July) on Cicero’s recommendation; the Fam. 7 sequence is the long pestering letter-string to “my Trebatius” by which Cicero alternately scolds the young jurist for not advancing fast enough and laughs at him for suggesting a return.

The letter is two short paragraphs. Cicero is still writing to Balbus on Trebatius’s behalf; Quintus’s letters reach him more often than Trebatius’s. The famous comic line is the news (which Caesar’s officers had quickly discovered) that there was no gold or silver in Britain to plunder. “Grab some war-chariot” — essedum aliquod capias — punning on the British war-chariot, the essedum which had so struck Roman observers; Trebatius can ride one of those home if the island is bare. The serious advice underneath is that Trebatius should make himself one of Caesar’s intimates, with the help of Quintus and Balbus and most of all his own diligence: “a most generous commander, the most opportune time of life, a recommendation surely without parallel.” The dagger marks a suspected lacuna: the closing aphorism reads as a clipped list, perhaps wanting a verb.