Cicero to D. Brutus, consul-designate, from Rome around 15 July 43 BC. The Perseus dateline gives Scr. ibidem eodem tempore quo ep. 16 — written at the same place and the same time as 11.16 — so it shares that letter’s dating, set against the bare year placeholder of the running order. The two form a pair: both press the candidacy of L. Aelius Lamia, a leading eques whose claims on Cicero went back to 58 BC, and both ask Brutus to throw the weight of the equestrian centuries, which he controlled, behind him in the praetorian elections.

Where 11.16 opens with its delicate parable about the right moment to deliver a letter and then makes the bolder claim — “I am the one standing for the praetorship” — this companion note is plainer and more compact: a brief testimonial to Lamia’s intimacy with Cicero and to his public standing, the worry that the canvassing has grown unruly, and the direct request that Brutus put all his resources and zeal into the cause. The repetition (“with all your resources, with all your zeal”) and the closing entreaty give the short letter its urgency. With 11.16, this is among the last of Cicero’s letters to D. Brutus to survive; both men would be dead before the year was out.