Cicero to C. Furnius, from Rome on 26 May 43 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae circ. vii K. Iun. a. 711 (43). Furnius is Plancus’s legatus and political fixer in the city, and the addressee here is the same Furnius whose errand to Octavian is described in Plancus’s letter of late July (10.24, $§$~4–7). At the time of writing he is travelling between Plancus’s camp in Gaul and Rome, carrying letters and intentions in both directions, and already eyeing the practor’s elections.

The whole letter is a single piece of advice, given with the controlled emphasis Cicero reserves for friends he respects. Furnius has been canvassing in absentia (or preparing to come down for the elections in person); Cicero tells him to stay where he is, to finish “what is left of the war” alongside Plancus, and to set his standing ($dignitas$) ahead of his ambition. The career arithmetic in section 2 is precise: Furnius is not yet at the statutory year for the praetorship — he has not held the aedileship, so no fixed two-year interval ties his hand — and the candidacy will be more brilliant under Plancus’s consulship in any case. The closing scene is domestic and characteristic: Cicero has rehearsed this counsel at home in the presence of Quintus, Caecina, Calvisius, and Furnius’s own freedman Dardanus, and reports their assent — “but you yourself will judge best.”