Cicero proconsul to M. Claudius Marcellus, consul of 51 BC, written from the same stage of the Cilician journey that produced 15.7 and 15.8 — the Perseus dateline reads “at the same place and time as letters vii and viii.” The book-precision metadata in this corpus carries it generically under 54 BC; the occasion belongs to summer or early autumn 51 BC, when news of the consular elections for 50 BC reached Cicero on the road and he wrote in turn to M. Marcellus, to his cousin C. Marcellus the consul-elect, and back to M. Marcellus.

Three sections, three notes. §1 is congratulation: M. Marcellus has reaped the fruit of his own distinguished consulship in seeing his cousin returned for 50 BC — and Cicero, “posted by you yourself to the ends of the earth,” raises him to heaven with the justest of praises. The praise is balanced and intimate: Cicero loved him in boyhood, and now hears from the best of men that the two are alike — “vel me tui similem esse audio vel te mei,” the chiasmic close of the section.

§2 is the practical request that runs through all the proconsular letters: do not let any time be added to my term. The senate had limited Cicero’s command to one year; he is anxious already to be relieved. If Marcellus will arrange a successor — or simply prevent the fixed term from being lengthened — “I shall reckon I have gained everything through you.”

§3 is the discreet aside, and the most characteristic. News of the Parthians has reached him; he will not yet write home officially; and for that reason — not even on the strength of friendship — he will not even write privately to a consul: “lest, having written to a consul, I should seem to have written officially.” Public and private overlap, in the consular’s mailbag, in ways the proconsul will not exploit.