Cicero to Quintus Valerius Orca, propraetor of Africa, written at Rome in the latter part of 56 BC. Orca had crossed to his province in the autumn; Cicero had seen him off paludatum, in the general’s red cloak that marked the formal departure for a command. The letter is the first of a series Cicero is sending Orca on behalf of the Roman business interests of his friend Publius Cuspius, twice principal of a societas publicanorum in Africa.

The architecture of the letter is unusual: it is the master commendation that legitimises the others. “In this letter I shall set out the grounds; in the rest I shall do only what is needed to attach the agreed mark of recognition and indicate that the man is a friend of Cuspius.” The particular man named here, Lucius Iulius, is being singled out for a commendation pressed on Cicero with such zeal that he is driven to a half-joke about the rhetorical art: Cuspius expects something extraordinary, and Cicero asks Orca to make sure that, in the man’s reception, the commendation looks as if it had drawn upon the inmost recesses of the rhetorical ars. The closing aside on the vultus — the welcome that the look of a governor in his province can give — is the working orator’s note to the working magistrate.