Cicero to M. Brutus, written from Rome on or about 13 April 43 BC. The Perseus dateline is Scr. eodem die quo ep. 2a. 711 (43) — “written the same day as letter 2a,” which is dated 13 April 43, two days after the senatorial sitting that followed news of the victory at Forum Gallorum. The meta entry’s year-precision placeholder of 18 June 43 must be corrected to 13 April: this is among the earliest of the surviving Brutus letters, not one of the latest.

The letter is a character reference. L. Clodius, tribune-designate for 42, has come to fear that something has been reported to Brutus by his enemies to alienate Brutus’s goodwill from him, and Cicero writes to vouch for him. The diplomatic interest of the piece lies in the single sentence “He has been advanced by a kindness of Antony’s. Of that kindness itself, a large share comes from you”: Clodius’s career owes both to Antony (still at this date the public enemy besieging Mutina) and to Brutus, who had backed Antony’s promotion of him before the war. Cicero’s argument is that Clodius now sees the position has hardened to where “the two cannot both come safely through,” and has chosen Brutus’s side. The Greek emphatikoteron (“more emphatically”) is the only Greek word in the letter, used self-consciously as the literary critic’s term for heightened expression.