Marcus Brutus and Cassius, both praetors, to the consul Mark Antony, from Lanuvium at the end of May 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Lanuvi ex. m. Mai. a. 710 (44). This is a public letter on a public situation. Two months after the Ides, the assassins have withdrawn from Rome to the Latin countryside: Brutus to Lanuvium, Cassius nearby. Antony, the surviving consul, is at Rome and is calling up Caesar’s veterans in numbers; the kalends of June is the date by which he means to have them in the city for a bill of land grants.

The praetors write with a careful, formal courtesy that does not at any point conceal the question being asked. They have done everything Antony advised — demobilised their own followers, withdrawn from Rome, kept the peace — and want now to know what his “goodwill” actually amounts to with so many armed Caesarians being mustered at the gates. The detail about “replacing the altar” refers to the unofficial altar to the deified Caesar that had gone up in the Forum where his body was burned and that the consul Dolabella had had torn down in April; the veterans were agitating for its restoration. The closing sentence is the heart of the letter: Brutus and Cassius will not be seen clinging to their own lives, because there is no harm that can come to them that does not bring the whole state down with them.