Cicero from Tarsus, on or just after 1 January 50 BC, to L. Aemilius Paullus, now actual consul (the salutation has changed since Fam. 15.12 from cos. desig. to cos.). Perseus groups the letter with Fam. 15.4 and 15.10, of late 51, but the address makes the new year’s opening days the obvious moment of composition. The proximate aim is sharp and specific: Cicero has won a modest victory on Mount Amanus, has been hailed imperator by his troops, and is now lobbying the consuls and senate for a supplicatio — a formal public thanksgiving — to be voted on his behalf, with all the political weight that such a vote will carry when he comes home to face the deteriorating republic.

The letter is a small masterclass in how to ask without appearing to ask. Cicero builds an architecture of mutual indebtedness — Paullus lent lustre to his consulship, lent lustre to his return from exile, and now finds Cicero’s third great public moment falling in the year of Paullus’s own consulship — and then declines, with elaborate civility, to press his request with the long speech the case would warrant. He merely begs Paullus to procure the decree quam honorificentissime and quam celerrime, to manage his reputation in absentia, and (the constant refrain of these months) to see that his year-long commission not be extended. The official dispatches mentioned at the close are Fam. 15.1 (to the senate) and 15.2 (to the consuls and praetors).