Cicero to Decimus Allienus, proconsul-designate (or incoming proconsul) of Sicily, written from Rome around the beginning of December 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae in. a. 708 (46), which Perseus prints as “the beginning of 708” but which on the substantive reasoning belongs to the threshold between the outgoing and incoming governors). Allienus succeeded Manius Acilius Glabrio in Sicily at the close of 46, and this letter belongs to the same handoff moment as Fam.\ 13.78: the recommendation patterns that Cicero had been using with Acilius across the cluster of Fam.\ 13.30–39 are now being redirected to his successor. The opening salutation D. Allieno procos. reflects that turn, and the two surviving Allienus letters (Fam.\ 13.78–79) read naturally as the start of a new cycle on Cicero’s part for the same province.

The beneficiaries are the two sons of C.\ Avianius Flaccus, one of Cicero’s older intimates and a beneficiary of Allienus’s earlier good will. The elder son, also C.\ Avianius, is in Sicily already; the younger, Marcus, is at Rome with Cicero. The letter is unusually short and concentrated: a single paragraph of testimonial, request, and double affirmation of the request — te rogo te vehementer etiam atque etiam rogo — a closing reduplication that in this cluster marks the warmer end of the genre. The old debt Allienus owed Flaccus, registered in the second sentence, supplies the ground for the recommendation: the sons are inheriting the favour, and Cicero is the mediating voice that turns the inheritance into a present obligation.