CCLXI (F II, 19)
TO C. CAELIUS CALDUS (APPOINTED QUAESTOR
FOR CILICIA)
(CILICIA, JUNE)
M. Tullius Cicero, imperator, son of Marcus,
grandson of Marcus, greets C. Caelius Caldus, son
of Lucius, grandson of Gaius, quaestor. When I
first received the most welcome intelligence that
the lot had assigned you to me as quaestor, I hoped that this chance would be a
source of greater pleasure the longer you were
with me in the province. For it appeared to me of
great importance that the connexion between us,
thus formed by fortune, should be supplemented by
personal intercourse. When subsequently I failed
to hear anything from yourself, or to receive a
letter from anyone else as to your arrival, I
began to fear, what I still fear may be the case,
that I should have left the province before you
arrived in it. However, when I was in camp in
Cilicia, I received a letter from you on the 21st
of June, expressed in the most cordial terms, and
sufficiently manifesting your kindness and
abilities. But it contained no indication of day
or place of writing, nor of the time at which I
might expect you; nor was the person who delivered
it to me the one to whom you had given it: for
then I might have ascertained from him where and
when it was despatched. In spite of this
uncertainty, I yet thought that I must contrive to
send some of my orderlies and lictors to you with
a letter. If you receive it in anything like time,
you will be doing me a very great favour if you
will join me in Cilicia as soon as you can. For
though, of course, what your cousin Curius, who
is, as you know, a very great ally of mine, and
also what your relative and my most intimate
friend C. Vergilius, have written to me about you
with the greatest earnestness has, of course, very
great importance in my eyes—as a serious
recommendation of such very warm friends is bound
to have—yet your own letter, and
especially what you say about your own position
and our connexion, has, to my mind, the greatest
weight of all. No quaestor could have been
assigned to me that would have been more welcome.
Wherefore whatever marks of distinction I can shew
you, shall be shewn, demonstrating to all the
world that I fully recognize your own and your
ancestors' high position. I shall be better able
to do this, if you join me in Cilicia, which I
think is very much to my interest and that of the
state, and above all to your own.
(CILICIA, JUNE)
