Cicero to Servius Sulpicius Rufus, proconsul of Achaia, written from Rome in 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae, ut videtur, a. 708 (46)). A single-paragraph recommendation, the shortest of the five letters in this sub-sequence. The beneficiary is Hagesaretus, a leading citizen of Larisa in Thessaly, who had received some unspecified service or favour from Cicero during his consulship in 63 BC — nearly two decades earlier — and had repaid it with steady attentions ever since. The political background is likely an act of Roman intervention on Larisa’s behalf during the Catilinarian year, but Cicero does not specify and Servius would have known.

The letter is interesting for the commendaticia tier-marker in the request: the formula magno opere commendo ("I commend most earnestly"), followed by a short stack of credentials (hospes meus, familiaris meus, gratus homo, vir bonus, princeps civitatis suae, tua necessitudine dignissimus — five appositive nouns rapid-fired), and the close requesting visible weight ("that he understand this recommendation of mine to have carried great weight with you"). Cicero is asking Servius to make the favour show, which is the standard but not the trivial form of the request. Hagesaretus is a man Cicero owes, not merely a man he has been asked to commend, and the letter signals as much within its single paragraph.