Cicero to L. Munatius Plancus, written from Rome on 11 April 43 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae iii Id. Apr. a. 711 (43). This is one of the great letters of the spring of 43 BC and one of Cicero’s happiest. Plancus’s despatch declaring his loyalty to the republican cause has reached Rome, been read aloud in a packed Senate, and — after a two-day struggle in which the urban praetor Cornutus had to defer business because the auspices had been fumbled, and the tribune P. Titius interposed his veto on behalf of Servilius Isauricus — has carried a vote of public honours moved by Cicero. The letter is the account of that triumph, sent back to its author in Gaul.

The narrative is dated to the hour: Varisidius delivers Plancus’s letter on the morning of 7 April; a crowd of optimorum virorum et civium escorts Cicero from his house and is made to share the joy; Munatius arrives and is shown both the private letter and the public dispatch; the party goes to Cornutus, then in charge of consular business more maiorum (the consuls Hirtius and Pansa being in the field at Mutina); the Senate is summoned, then deferred on auspicial grounds, with the College of Augurs — Cicero’s own college — confirming the religious objection. On the second day Cicero wrestles Servilius’s prior motion off the floor; on the third he breaks both Servilius and the tribunician veto. Plancus is to read the details in other correspondents’ letters; from Cicero he gets the one line that matters: the Senate could not have been “graver, steadier, friendlier to your praises,” and “the whole community of the city” was more loyal still.

The closing section is the moral peroration. Plancus is to press on, to despise the inanissimis splendoris insignibus “the most empty trappings of show” — those short-lived, painted, fragile things that look like glory — and to fix on verum decus, true honour, which is set in virtue and is most brilliantly displayed by great services to the state. Cicero will be not merely the supporter of Plancus’s standing but the magnifier of it. The credit Cicero gives to T. Munatius (Plancus’s brother, sometimes called Bursa, here ranged firmly on the right side) is a courtesy and a piece of political housekeeping: the letter that makes Plancus’s career also names the friend who has been working the chambers for him in Rome.