Cicero to M. Brutus, from Rome, 11 July 43 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae v Id. Quint., a. 711 (43), the date confirmed by the closing subscript “v Idus Quintiles.” Day-precision in meta/works.yaml. The opening is one of the sharpest reproaches in the correspondence: “A short letter from you — short, do I say? rather, none at all. Three little lines, in such times as these, from Brutus to me? You would have done better not to write.” Brutus’s previous note had been a thin scrap; it had also reported that young Marcus Cicero, who has been studying with Brutus in Greece, was about to leave him for Italy. Cicero has packed off couriers to head his son back. He has been working hard to postpone the priestly elections to the next year for his son’s sake (and for Domitius, Cato — Brutus’s brother-in-law — Lentulus, and “the Bibuli”).

Section 2 is the political plea, sharpened to something close to an order. The war has been reborn through Lepidus’s crime; Octavian’s army, “which was the best,” is no longer a help and is now actively forcing the demand for Brutus’s army to be heard; “if that army shall touch Italy, there will be no citizen — no one, at least, whom it is lawful to call a citizen — who does not take himself into your camp.” The closing sentence is the famous one — the appeal that turns the meaning of the Ides on its head: “persuade yourself that on the Ides of March, when you drove out slavery from your fellow citizens, you did not bring your country more benefit than you will bring by coming in good time.” Brutus will not come. Eight days after this letter, on 19 August, Octavian will march on Rome and seize the consulship. The next surviving letter to Brutus, 1.15, is later and longer; 1.14 stands as the last unstrained appeal.