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 brief recommendation of T. Ampius Menander, the freedman of T. Ampius Balbus, one of Cicero’s closest friends. The letter is short and frames its own weight: Cicero acknowledges that many ask to be recommended to Servilius through him, and that he sometimes obliges indiscriminately — but here he is writing for one of his intimates, and that should be felt.

The middle piece in the Servilius recommendation cluster (13.68–72). T. Ampius Balbus, the patron, was a Pompeian who had been pardoned by Caesar; Menander’s affairs in Asia would have needed protection from a sympathetic proconsul. The closing double formula — “You will do me a very welcome service \ this I most earnestly beg of you, again and again” — is the standard rhetorical sign-off of the recommendation genre.