Cicero to Manius Acilius Glabrio, proconsul of Sicily, written from Rome in 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae, ut videtur, a. 708 (46)). The sixth surviving letter of the Acilius cluster (Fam.\ 13.30–39). The beneficiary is Hippias, son of Philoxenus, of Calacte — a small Greek town on the north coast of Sicily — with whom Cicero stands in the double relation of hospes and necessarius. The reported grievance is a confiscation: Hippias’s property, Cicero understands, has been taken into the town’s possession under another man’s name, in contravention of the local statutes of Calacte. He asks the proconsul to set the matter right.

Distinct in the cluster for being a substantive appeal rather than a routine commendation. Cicero structures the asking on two registers: the equity of the case (if the facts are as reported, the proconsul’s aequitas should suffice without intervention) and, redundantly, the writer’s standing (which is invoked anyway, against whatever facts may emerge). The qualifier quoquo modo autem se res habet is characteristic — Cicero hedges over the facts, which he knows only at one remove, while not hedging at all on the request. The closing formula echoes the cluster’s common cadence (quantum tua fides dignitasque patietur, with the deference to the governor’s scruple), and the asseverative vehementer gratum carries the strong-thanks register.