Cicero to Publius Silius, propraetor of Bithynia and Pontus, undated — placed by Perseus’s tradition shortly after Fam. 13.61, in the season of Cicero’s proconsulship of Cilicia (51–50 BC). The opening note of gratitude points back to a ruling already given: in the matter of one Atilius, a Roman knight, Silius had ruled in his favour despite Cicero’s belated intervention. The heading address N(=P.) SILIO PROPR. carries the common Perseus typo for the praenomen.

The substance is two requests in one breath. First, Cicero takes occasion to enroll Silius firmly among his own circle — the idiom te in meo aere esse (“you are on my books”) comes from the language of the account-ledger, and Cicero invokes the bond through their common friend Lucius Aelius Lamia. Second, the real business of the letter, set as a coda: Quintus, Cicero’s brother, is to be received into Silius’s province on the same footing as Cicero himself. The tone is intimate, slightly impudent, and brief: Cicero’s standard register when asking a peer for what amounts to a small favour by the genre’s measure but a large one by personal weight.