Cicero to Tiro, written from Corcyra on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of December — 17 November 50 BC — ten days after the three-letter cluster of 16.4–16.6 from Leucas and Actium. The salutation has narrowed: Tullius et Cicero s. d. Tironi suo — “Tullius and Cicero send greeting to their own Tiro.” The brother Quintus and his son no longer share the address line; they are at Buthrotum on the mainland, and Cicero notes it in the opening sentence. This closes the second wave of the Tiro-illness cluster from the homeward leg of the Cilician proconsulship.

The party has been weatherbound. Seven days at Corcyra, no letter from Tiro — but Cicero will not blame him for the silence, because the very winds that would carry a letter from Patrae are the winds that would have let Cicero’s own ship leave the harbour. The reasoning is characteristic: the absence of news is itself evidence that no news could have come. The prescription is unchanged from the Leucas letters — recover first, then sail when health and season allow — and the closing returns to the household-wide affection: nemo nos amat qui te non diligat, “no one loves us who does not love you.” The address Tiro noster in the parting formula is reserved for him alone in book 16.