Cicero to C. Trebatius Testa, written probably from his Tusculan villa in January 53 BC. Trebatius, a young jurist whom Cicero had commended to Caesar, was serving on the Gallic staff and grumbling, as ever, about the discomforts of the camp. The opening joke turns on the political vacuum at Rome: with the consular elections obstructed through most of 53, the city lurched from one short interregnum to the next, and a civil lawyer in Rome had no courts to plead in — so, Cicero quips, even if Trebatius had not already left, he would be leaving now.

The middle section is the heart of the letter. Cicero is relieved to find Trebatius joking again in his correspondence (“these signs are better than the statues in my Tusculan villa”), but probes for hard news: is Caesar actually advancing him, or merely consulting him? If something is in train, stay; if not, come home. The threat of comic exposure — the mimographer Laberius, and a second writer named Valerius, putting “the British jurisconsult” on stage — belongs to the running joke of the Trebatius correspondence, in which Cicero pretends that his friend’s Gallic adventure is fit material for the mime stage. The closing paragraph drops the banter for a moment of plain counsel, then returns to warmth: whatever Trebatius wants he will get, by his own merit and Cicero’s effort.