Cicero to his freedman Tiro, written from Leucas on the seventh day before the Ides of November — 7 November 50 BC. The salutation is joint: Tullius Tironi suo s. p. d. et Cicero et Q. frater et Q. f. — “Tullius gives much greeting to his own Tiro, and so does Cicero, and brother Quintus, and Quintus’s son.” All four men of the household stand together in the address line. Cicero is on the long return from his Cilician proconsulship and has had to leave Tiro behind at Patrae too sick to travel. This is the opening of a cluster written on the same homeward leg — 16.4 and 16.5 on the same day from Leucas, 16.6 that evening from Actium, 16.7 ten days later from Corcyra — and the second wave of the Tiro-illness correspondence, the first of which (16.1, 16.2, 16.3) was sent from Patrae itself when Cicero set sail.

The letter is a careful negotiation of medical authority. Cicero half-trusts Tiro’s Greek doctor and half-doesn’t: he disapproves of the broth that has been given to a weak stomach ([Greek: kakostomachos]), suspects Lyso of the carelessness he attributes generally to Greeks, and arranges for the more reliable Curius to take Tiro into his own house. Money is no object — spare no expense, give the doctor a fee to sharpen his attention. The substantive instruction is the opposite of the one Tiro is used to: omnia depone, corpori servi, “set everything aside; be the servant of your body.” Cicero closes with the formula reserved for those he worries about most, the threefold vale, mi Tiro, vale, vale et salve.