Cicero to C. Curio, proconsul, written from Rome between mid-October 47 BC and the third day before the Ides of March 44 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae inter med. ut Oct. a. 707 (47) et 5 Id. Mart. a. 710 (44)). The dating is open across more than three years; the recipient is one of the lesser Curios who held a proconsular command in this period, not the famous tribune of 50 BC who died in Africa in 49.

A brief recommendation in the conventional shape, pressed harder than the usual: Q. Pompeius, son of Sextus, is an old friend, long accustomed to being backed by Cicero’s letters; now that Curio holds the province, Cicero asks that this commendation count for more than any he has ever written. The formula is the familiar one — “receive him into your good faith,” in fidem recipias — but the closing turn, that the beneficiary should come to feel “no thing could have been of greater use or distinction” than a word from Cicero, is the warmest form the genre allows.