Cicero to M. Junius Brutus, written from Rome at dawn — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae prid. Id. Apr. mane a. 711 (43), i.e.\ 12 April 43 BC, in the morning. The dateline matches the meta date. The letter is an explicit postscript: the previous day’s letter (to which 2.4 is functionally a sequel) was given to Scaptius for delivery on 11 April, and a letter from Brutus, written at Dyrrachium on 1 April, was delivered to Cicero that same evening; when Cicero learned next morning that Scaptius’s messengers had not yet departed, he scratched out this supplement in ipsa turba matutinae salutationis — “amid the very throng of my morning callers” — a phrase that preserves the texture of the consular morning. The letter is therefore a snapshot of a single Roman dawn in the worst week of the Mutina campaign: two days before Forum Gallorum, written before the householder has finished receiving his clients.

The letter answers Brutus point by point. Section 2 reports the Senate’s decree authorising Cassius to pursue Dolabella, won over the angry opposition of the consul Pansa — a notable detail, since Pansa is within a fortnight of dying of his Forum-Gallorum wounds. Section 3 is the most politically pointed of the six paragraphs: Brutus has asked what to do about his prisoner C.\ Antonius (Mark Antony’s brother, captured at Apollonia), and Cicero replies, with the bare sufficiency he reserves for matters where Brutus already knows his mind, “until we have learned how Brutus’s case has come out, I think he should be kept in custody.” The Perseus text in this section carries an unresolved crux at eam semel cepit, mihi crede, non erit id.\ Apr., here preserved between daggers. Section 4 is the practical answer about troops and money: Brutus must borrow from the cities, and Pansa will not release reinforcements — whether out of strategic prudence or out of jealousy of Brutus’s strength, Cicero leaves open. Section 5 deals with the spread of Cassius’s news in Rome and the temper of the still-existing partes Caesaris; and section 6 is the famous coda about Cicero’s son, then on Brutus’s staff in Macedonia, in which the father’s delight at the son’s promise is openly inseparable from his delight that Brutus loves him. The letter is one of the most domestically intimate of the Brutus correspondence and one of the most politically dense.