Cicero to D. Brutus, from Rome on 14 July 43 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae circ. prid. Id. Quint. a. 711 (43). The subject is Appius Claudius (son of Gaius), a young noble who had joined Antony’s camp on the chance of having his exiled father recalled. With Antony defeated at Mutina and on the run beyond the Alps, the young Appius is now in danger as a partisan of the wrong side, and Cicero writes to Brutus — by then in the field against Antony — to ask that he be spared.

The letter is one of Cicero’s most polished short recommendations: the appeal turns on Brutus’s already- recognised virtus and asks him to add clementia to it, while the young man’s defence (pietas toward an exiled father) is set out frankly enough that Brutus, if need be, can borrow it as a usable pretext. It is the second-to-last of Cicero’s surviving letters to Brutus.