Cicero to D. Brutus, consul-designate, from Rome on 29 May 43 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae iv Kal. Iun. a. 711 (43). The letter is written in Rome the day after the consular bench at Mutina has emptied: Hirtius and Pansa are both dead, Octavian’s army is in northern Italy intriguing for the consulship, and the news from Plancus’s camp in Gaul has gone uncertain. Cicero replies to a recent dispatch from Brutus that asked for the Martian and Fourth legions, money, and a clear hand against Antony’s remnants.

The opening is unguarded: “the Senate was my instrument” (organon enim erat meum senatus) — a Greek metaphor in Greek script in the manuscript — and his great speeches against Antony now look to him like skiamachiai, “shadow-boxing.” One Greek word, one corrupt clause (Perseus marks the break with daggers), and the most candid letter Cicero will write that month. The “young man” of $§$~1 is Octavian; “Brutus” in $§$~2 is M. Brutus, whom Cicero wants brought back from Macedonia; the “board of ten” is the senatorial commission set up to deal with the captured forces and the eastern recruits. The birthday in $§$~3 is D.~Brutus’s: the Mutina victory was announced on 27 April, his birthday.