Cicero to Manius Acilius Glabrio, proconsul of Sicily, written from Rome in 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae, ut videtur, a. 708 (46)). Another piece of the Acilius cluster (Fam.\ 13.30–39), and one in which Cicero stages the genre’s awkwardness more frankly than usual.

The beneficiary is Gaius Flavius, a Roman knight, linked to Cicero through his late son-in-law Gaius Piso and warmly attentive to him along with his brother Lucius. Cicero asks that Acilius treat the man with every possible honour. The second section is where the piece becomes pointed: Cicero affirms, in an explicit disavowal of ambitio — the canvasser’s habit he had named in 13.32 as the embarrassment of the genre — that this recommendation is grounded not in that impulse but in personal connection, obligation, and the plain truth of the man’s worth. He goes further: Acilius himself will profit by the acquaintance. The move is characteristic of the cluster’s economy — when every letter commends, the writer who can offer the recipient something in return earns the favour twice over.