Cicero to M. Junius Brutus, written from Rome in late May or early June 43 BC. The Perseus dateline reads Scr.\ ex.\ m.\ Maio aut in.\ Iun.\ a.\ 711 (43) — “end of May or beginning of June 43 BC” — which is broader than the meta date of 13 June; the meta date is editorial precision imposed on a Perseus range, and the parallel sidecar follows the meta date as the canonical day-precision anchor while the discrepancy is recorded here. The letter is contemporary with the political stalemate after Mutina, while Brutus is still in the field in the Balkans and Octavian is beginning his drift away from the senatorial party.

The letter is a short, dignified letter of recommendation, of the kind Cicero writes by the dozen in this period to the proconsuls commanding the republican armies. Section 1 acknowledges — with a graceful preamble — that he must recommend many men, since every man of standing now looks to Brutus’s judgement. Section 2 is the substance: C.\ Nasennius of Suessa, a former centurion (octavum principem duxit, “served as principal centurion of the eighth cohort”) in Metellus’s Cretan war of 68–67 BC, now in middle age and seeking a return to public service under Brutus’s standard, is recommended as brave, honest, and propertied. Letters of this kind are the daily currency of Roman politics under the republic; their value to the historian lies less in the cases they advance than in the picture they give of the network of recommendation and standing through which men of equestrian or municipal rank found their way into the great commands.