Cicero from Tarsus to Cato at Rome, written shortly before the Kalends of Sextilis 50 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Tarsi paulo ante in. K. Sext. a. 704 (50)). The reply to Cato’s letter (Fam. 15.5), which conceded a citation for integrity but withheld support for the public thanksgiving. Cicero had asked Cato for both in Fam. 15.4; the Senate had in the event voted the supplicatio despite Cato’s dissent. By the time Cicero composes this answer he knows that he has carried the day on the substance; what remains is the management of the friendship.

The architecture of the reply mirrors Cato’s, and slightly twists it. Section 1 chooses the high road, opening with a verse from Naevius — Hector to his father, “I am glad to be praised by you, a praised man” — and praising Cato’s testimony as worth more than any chariot or laurel: the highest tribute in the corpus, delivered to the one senator who had argued against him. Section 2 turns Cato’s conditional construction back upon him with deliberate care. Cicero declines Cato’s word “craving” for his “wish”; concedes that an honour ought not to be hunted for too eagerly; insists the Senate has now in fact bestowed it; and asks of Cato the very thing Cato had asked of him — to rejoice, if what was preferred has come to pass, in its coming to pass. The pointed touch is the closing observation that Cato’s friends were present at the drafting of the decree, since (as everyone knows) such decrees are drafted by the closest friends of the honoree. The irritation is in the architecture, not in the prose; the surface is courteous throughout. The letter closes with the fear, already gathering in the homeward letters, that the commonwealth Cicero is returning to will not be in the state he wishes to find it.