Ad Familiares 13.58
Ad Familiares 13.58
Headnote
Cicero to C. Titius Rufus, urban praetor at Rome, written perhaps from Laodicea after the third day before the Ides of February (after 11 February) 50 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. fortasse Laudiceae post a. d. iii Id. Febr. a. 704 (50)). A brief recommendation in the conventional shape: who the man is, what he needs, and what Cicero asks.
The beneficiary is L. Custidius, Cicero’s fellow tribesman and a man of Arpinum — a triple bond of tribulis et municeps et familiaris. The request is the minimum the form allows: easy access, a fair hearing, and the visible warmth that signals a patron’s friendship reaches even to a city tribunal from the far end of the empire.
L. Custidius is my fellow tribesman, my fellow townsman, and a close friend. He has a case, which he will bring before you. I commend the man to you in such terms as your good faith and my own sense of restraint require: only that he have easy access to you, that whatever is fair he may obtain with your good will, and that he feel my friendship doing him good, even when I am far away, and most of all at your tribunal.
L. Custidius est tribulis et municeps et familiaris meus. is causam habet, quam causam ad te deferet. commendo tibi hominem, sic ut tua fides et meus pudor postulat, tantum ut facilis ad te aditus habeat, quae aequa postulabit ut libente te impetret, sentiatque meam sibi amicitiam, etiam cum longissime absim, prodesse, in primis apud te.