Marcus Brutus and Cassius, both praetors, to the consul Mark Antony, from Naples on 4 August 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Neapoli prid. Non. Sext. a. 710 (44), which the closing line of the letter itself confirms. The salutation uses the formal opening si vales, bene est, a courtesy entirely at odds with what follows. The addressee is Antony at Rome; the writers are by now on the Campanian coast, having been forced from the city by the veterans the previous letter (11.2) had asked him to control.

This is the famous indignant reply — the public letter in which the surviving conspirators come out from under the language of conciliation and answer Antony as equals to an aggressor. He had issued an edict and a letter of his own, “abusive, threatening,” which evidently threw Caesar’s death in their faces; they answer point by point. The list in section 2 (levies, requisitions, tampered armies, agents sent overseas) is a catalogue of Antony’s actions over the summer, here treated as already accomplished facts that do not need denying. The third section refuses to be intimidated — “Antony has no business commanding the men by whose work he is a free man” — and the closing of section 4 is the line most often quoted from the correspondence of this year: do not consider how long Caesar lived, but how short a time he reigned. Within weeks Cicero would deliver the First Philippic, and the open contest with Antony begin in earnest.