Decimus Brutus to Cicero, written from camp at Regium Lepidi on 29 April 43 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. in castris Regi iii K. Mai. a. 711 (43). The siege of Mutina has been broken; Antony, defeated at the battle of Mutina on 21 April (a week after Forum Gallorum), is in retreat westward across the Apennines and Cisalpine Gaul toward Lepidus’s province in Gallia Narbonensis. Both consuls are dead — Pansa of his wounds, Hirtius on the field — and D. Brutus, freed from his siege, has taken up the pursuit. This is the first of his field dispatches as the war shifts from defence of Mutina to chase across northern Italy. The register is clipped, hurried, military: who must be sent where, who can be trusted, what he himself proposes to do next. The political stakes show through in the names: Lepidus the “weathercock” must be held in line; Pollio in Spain is already known to be unreliable; Plancus in Gaul still needs confirming. If Antony reaches any of their armies intact, the war begins again.