Cicero to Q. Minucius Thermus, propraetor of Asia, undated — written, Perseus’s tradition reports, shortly after Fam. 13.53. The setting is Cicero’s own proconsulship of Cilicia in 51–50 BC; the matter is the collection of debts owed by Greek cities in Asia to the Puteolan financier Cluvius, whose business Pompey himself was backing. Cicero’s interest is thus double: a friend’s profit, and a powerful friend’s investment.

The letter is a checklist. Mylasa and Alabanda are to send legal representatives (ekdikoi) to Rome rather than mere envoys, who could merely talk; Philocles of Alabanda is to surrender the mortgages he had lodged with Cluvius or pay; Heraclea and Bargylia are to settle in coin or in kind; the Caunians’ claim of judicial deposit is to be examined and, if it does not stand, the interest preserved. The four Greek words and ethnonyms in the Latin (Mulaseis, Alabandeis, ekdikoi, hupothekas) are technical terms of provincial finance and procedure; Cicero reaches for them as the working vocabulary of the world he is writing about.