Cicero at Rome to P. Servilius Isauricus, proconsul of Asia, written in the course of 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae, ut videtur, a. 708). A recommendation of C. Curtius Mithres, freedman of Cicero’s close friend Postumus, whose house at Ephesus had served as Cicero’s lodging on every passage through the province. Mithres has a property dispute with a man of Colophon and other matters in train; Cicero asks Servilius to take him into his trust as one of Cicero’s own intimates.

One of four recommendation letters in the Servilius cluster at the end of Ad Familiares 13 (13.68–72). The register is the polished formal register of the recommendation genre — “so far as your good faith will allow,” “so far as you can do so consistently with your convenience” — but the warmth is genuine: the unusual length of the opening paragraph (“I have written this to you at greater length so that you might understand that I am not writing of him commonly or perfunctorily”) is itself a calibrated signal that this is not one of the routine cards but a personal favour. Ephesus, the provincial capital, is where Mithres’s house and the dispute both sit.