Cicero to Q. Cornificius, from Rome around the middle of September 46 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae circ. med. in Sept. a. 708 (46). Cornificius, addressed here as conlega (a fellow-augur), has gone out to a provincial command — the troubles in Syria mentioned in section 1 (the Caecilius Bassus affair) sit near his theatre — and Cicero, finding Rome quiet to the point of stagnation under Caesar’s dictatorship, fills the silence with literature. The book he wants Cornificius to read is the Orator (“de optimo genere dicendi”), addressed to Brutus and finished in the same months; the joke about voting for it “as a favour” if the substance fails to convince is the relaxed shorthand of one scholar-statesman to another. The closing tribute — “no one above you, few beside you” — is the warmth Cicero reserves for the small circle of educated younger men whose career he means to back.