Cicero proconsul to C. Claudius Marcellus, consul-elect for 50 BC, written from the eastward leg of the Cilician journey in late summer 51 BC. The Perseus dateline places it “at the same place and time as letter vii,” i.e. with 15.7 to M. Marcellus from Lycaonia on 21 September. The book-level metadata in this corpus carries it under 54 BC, the placeholder year for Book 15; the actual occasion is the consular elections of summer 51 BC, in which the addressee was returned for the following year.

The recipient is greeted as conlega, which is the augural address: Cicero had been co-opted into the augural college after Crassus’s death in 53 BC, and the Marcelli of this generation were also augurs. The text is one section, all warmth: “your Marcellus has been made consul” — a familiar third-person reference to the addressee himself — and the addressee, whose whole house has stood by Cicero “in my hardship as in my honour,” deserves the rejoicing. Cicero closes by asking him to convey congratulations to his wife Iunia, that gravissima atque optima femina, and renews the standing request that runs through the proconsular correspondence: me absentem diligas atque defendas — “cherish me in absence, and stand in my defence.”