Cicero to C. Memmius, written from Rome around April 52 BC or shortly after (the manuscripts: Scr. Romae, ut videtur, post m. Apr. 702 aut in. a. 703). The addressee is the same C. Memmius addressed in Fam. 13.1 and 13.2, and the form is the small letter of recommendation that runs through the early part of Book 13. Here Cicero commends one A. Fufius, otherwise unknown, on whose behalf Memmius has apparently already given him a face-to-face undertaking.

The letter is a single sentence in Latin, a miniature in the form. The leverage Cicero applies is not pressure but courtesy: Memmius has already promised, so all Cicero asks is that the promise be honoured ut mihi coram recepisti (“in the way you assured me in person”). The closing turn — Fufius will bind himself to Memmius for life through his officium and observantia — locates the favour in the ordinary economy of Roman patronage: a service done now produces a client permanently attached to the patron. The brevity is the register; longer recommendations in the same book (Fam. 13.5–6, 13.13) show what Cicero produces when the case needs argument rather than reminder.