Letter · October 47 BC · Romae

Ad Familiares 13.48

Ad Familiares 13.48

Headnote

Cicero at Rome to Gaius Sextilius Rufus, quaestor of Cyprus, written in autumn 47 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae, ut videtur, autumno anni 707 (47)). Cyprus had been annexed in 58 BC and attached administratively to the province of Cilicia, which Cicero himself had governed in 51–50. Sextilius is the first quaestor to be posted to the island as a separate appointment, and Cicero writes to him with the special authority of a recent ex-governor: he commends the whole provincial population, and the people of Paphos in particular, and points the young magistrate towards the precedents he should follow — the standing edict of Sextilius’s own kinsman Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther (governor of Cilicia 56–53 BC), and the practices Cicero himself had instituted in the province. The metadata entry carries a year-precision placeholder of -0047-05-05; the Perseus dateline points to autumn 47, which should be carried into the meta entry at the next consolidation pass.

I commend to you all the Cypriots, but the people of Paphos most especially (and whatever favours you do them will be the most welcome to me); and I do it with all the greater pleasure, because I judge it conducive also to your own credit, of which I am the partisan, that since you are the first quaestor to come into that island, you should put in place the practices the rest will follow. These you will achieve the more easily, I trust, if you choose to follow both the regulation of your kinsman Publius Lentulus and what has been laid down by me; and I am confident this will be a thing of great credit to you.
omnis tibi commendo Cyprios, sed magis Paphios (quibus tu quaecumque commodaris erunt mihi gratissima), eoque facio libentius ut eos tibi commendem, quod et tuae laudi, cuius ego fautor sum, conducere arbitror, cum primus in eam insulam quaestor veneris, ea te instituere quae sequantur alii; quae, ut spero, facilius consequere, si et P. Lentuli, necessari tui, legem et ea quae a me constituta sunt sequi volueris; quam rem tibi confido magnae laudi fore.

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Ad Familiares 13.48

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