Cicero to one Rex — the salutation in the manuscripts is the bare Cicero Regi s., with no office or further title — written from Rome about the middle of September 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae circ. med. m. Sept. a. 708 (46)). The recipient’s identity is uncertain: he is normally taken to be a Marcius Rex, perhaps the propraetor Q. Marcius Rex, governing a province in the East — Asia or Cilicia — where the addressee can plausibly affect the fortunes of a Maltese in transit; but the editors hedge, and Cicero himself, with the casual mi Rex at the close, gives no formal cue. The brevity, the bare salutation, and the easy intimacy of the close all point to an addressee Cicero knows well enough not to need ceremony with.

The beneficiary is A.\ Licinius Aristoteles of Malta, named in the opening line as Cicero’s antiquissimus hospes — “my oldest guest-friend” — a tier-marker Cicero reserves for the most established of his hospitium relationships. Aristoteles had been a Pompeian and had stayed in the cause even longer than Cicero, who got his pardon from Caesar. The recommendation is therefore not so much an introduction as a request that an existing favour be visibly delivered: the addressee already knows the man’s standing, and the letter exists to make sure Aristoteles can carry it away as a tangible benefit. The flattery in the middle sentence — ex multis cognosco meam commendationem plurimum apud te valere, “my recommendation carries the greatest weight with you” — is the standard pivot of such letters between equals.