Cicero to Manius Acilius Glabrio, proconsul of Sicily, written from Rome in 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae, ut videtur a. 708 (46)). This is one of a cluster of recommendation letters (Fam.\ 13.30–39) addressed to Acilius on behalf of clients with affairs in his province. The beneficiaries here are the brothers Marcus and Gaius Clodius Archagathus and Philo of Halaesa, a prosperous and distinguished Sicilian town of which their family was evidently a leading house; Cicero’s tie to them is one of long standing, formed of hospitality, mutual obligation, and personal regard.

The interest of the piece is the open acknowledgement of the rhetorical embarrassment of the genre. Cicero, sending Acilius a sheaf of these notes, is aware that by commending so many people in the strongest terms he risks flattening the currency of recommendation altogether — and he says so, in a brief and slightly rueful aside, before pressing on with the request anyway. The candour is itself a Ciceronian gesture: the writer who knows that recommendations are counters in a patronage economy, and trusts his correspondent to know it too, can afford to admit the fact without ceasing to ask.