Cicero to M. Claudius Marcellus, consul of 51 BC, written from Cilicia late in the year (Perseus dateline: Scr. Tarsi vel ex. a. 703 (51) vel in. 704 (50), i.e. either the close of 51 or the opening of 50). The letter is a short request: Marcellus, in his last weeks of office as consul, should see that when Cicero’s dispatch of victory is read in the Senate, the corresponding decree of a public thanksgiving — supplicatio — is voted in the most honourable terms. It is the companion piece to the long letter to Cato (Fam. 15.4) and part of the larger lobbying campaign by which Cicero, after the Pindenissus operation, sought senatorial recognition for his year of command.

The letter’s currency is the unbroken history of services between the Marcelli and Cicero. The opening sentence, with its careful cataloguing of “the Marcelli, and the Marcellini too,” acknowledges that the entire family — this consul, his father, his brother, his cousins — has stood by Cicero in matters of his standing and safety. The implication is the quietly insistent one of the genre: I have never asked you for anything that I have not earned the right to ask. The hard practical move is the request that the consul take charge of the procedural moment when the dispatch is read out, and shepherd the decree through in good form: Marcellus held the fasces in November and December and could control the order of business. The supplicatio did in fact pass, after some contest, but only after Cato voted against it on principle; for that further chapter see Fam. 15.4 and 15.6.