M. Junius Brutus to Cicero, written from camp in mid-to-late June 43 BC. The Perseus dateline reads Scr.\ in castris ex.\ m.\ Iun., a.\ 711 (43) — “end of June 43 BC, in camp” — a month-precision range; the meta entry imposes 15 June as a canonical day-precision date, used in the parallel sidecar with this discrepancy noted. Brutus is still in the Balkan camp, after the campaign against C.\ Antonius and the march along the Via Egnatia. The letter is a short private commendation, but it characterises Brutus’s prose at its most warmly direct.

The subject is “veteran Antistius” — C.\ Antistius Vetus, the young senator who had supplied Brutus with funds earlier in the year (see Ad Brutum 2.3.5) and who had refused, in Achaia, to give money to Dolabella under the threat of his soldiers and cavalry. Brutus tells the story of that refusal in a long subordinate clause that builds suspense and lands on its main verb: Antistius preferred to “run any risk you please from the ambushes of a brigand fully equipped for every outrage” rather than appear to have been coerced into paying or willing to pay. He has now joined Brutus in person and given twenty thousand sesterces of his own money. Section 2 reports Brutus’s attempt to keep him in the camp as a commander rather than let him depart for Rome to stand for the praetorship, and his quiet success in dissuading him. The closing request — that Cicero “love the veteran and wish him as great a place as may be” — is the note of personal warmth Brutus permits himself only sparingly. The text in section 2 carries a small lacuna (statuit id sibi * *), here preserved with asterisks where the manuscripts fail.