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On the news of his departure Cicero returned to Rome, where he arrived on the ninth of December. He immediately conferred with Pansa one of the consuls elect (Hirtius his colleague was ill) as to the measures to be taken. He was again addressed with earnest solicitations by the friends of Octavius, who, to confirm his belief in his good intentions, allowed Casca, who had been of the slayers of Caesar and had himself given him the first blow, to enter on his office as tribune of the people on the tenth of December.
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The new tribunes convoked the senate for the nineteenth on which occasion Cicero had intended to be absent but receiving the day before the edict of Decimus Brutus, by which he forbade Antonius to enter his province (immediately after the death of Caesar he had taken possession of Cisalpine Gaul, which had been conferred on him by Caesar) and declared that he would defend it against him by force and preserve it in its duty to the senate, he thought it necessary to procure for Brutus a resolution of the senate in his favor. He went down therefore very early, and, in a very full house, delivered the following speech.