Cicero to M. Porcius Cato, written from camp near Iconium on the 30th of August 51 BC — one day before he broke camp and pushed on through Cappadocia, the same day he was writing to Appius (3.6). The manuscript dateline (Scr. in castris ad Iconium iii K. Sept. aut paulo post a. 703) gives the date as the 30th of August or shortly after. This is an early personal dispatch from the Cilician command, written to a senator whom Cicero wants in his corner when the time comes for honours to be voted on his governorship — Cato’s incorruptible reputation makes his support uniquely valuable. The letter is the first of several to Cato in this period and the only one of the surviving group sent in mid-campaign, before the operations and the legal–administrative reforms that will fill the autumn.

The news is the same news that will be sent officially to the Senate three weeks later (15.1): Pacorus has crossed the Euphrates with a great Parthian host; the Armenian king is said to be moving against Cappadocia. Cicero explains why he is not writing publice — Antiochus has already sent the Senate his own dispatch, and Bibulus, proconsul of Syria, will have reached his province by now and will report from there. (Bibulus had not in fact yet arrived, which is why the official dispatch of 15.1 becomes necessary.) The closing sentences carry the two notes that will be the leitmotifs of Cicero’s Cilician self-presentation: in so weak a force, the strategy is to hold the East by Roman mildness and continentia — decent conduct toward the provincials — and by the loyalty those win, more than by arms; and a personal request to Cato to think well of the absent governor and to defend him in his absence.