assembly in passing a law in June transferring those provinces to himself. Antony left on 28 November 44 BC seeking to take those provinces from their governors. Soon afterwards, Cicero was writing to the governors already stationed there seeking military support to resist Antony's assumption of the provinces; he wrote both to Plancus and Decimus Brutus. On 20 December 44 BC, the senate decreed that the existing governors should resist Antony by force if necessary. His funerary inscription attests that around this time he founded the cities of Augusta Raurica (44 BC) and Lugdunum (Lyon) (43 BC) and in June 43 BC, some letters attest to his passage through the village of Cularo (present Grenoble) in the Dauphiné Alps. Plancus was slow to respond to the senate's call to arms. Responding months later in March 43 BC, he publicly warned against the rush to war. Privately, he wrote to Cicero that he was preparing his legions and auxiliaries. While both sides were preparing forces, it is clear that Plancus was entertaining offers from both Cicero in the senate and Antony. Around the same time a further message arrived from Plancus publicly declaring for the senate, Antony asserted in a letter to Rome that he had Plancus' support. Plancus defended his caution with the argument that declaring too rashly before preparations would have meant swift consequences like those that befell Decimus Brutus (then besieged in Mutina). The senate sent three commanders, the two consuls and Caesar's heir Octavian after Antony. They defeated Antony on 21 April 43 BC at the Battle of Mutina; but both consuls were killed. After the battle, Plancus sought to persuade Marcus Aemilius Lepidus to join with the senate. After Lepidus joined Antony on 29 May, Plancus retreated across the river Isara and sought to join forces with Decimus, his co-consul designate for 42 BC and a high-profile tyrannicide. Lepidus sent a message to the senate blaming his soldiers for forcing his defection; at the same time, Octavian refused to cooperate with Decimus Brutus, ostensibly due to his soldiers refusing to help an assassin of Caesar. In the last letter from Plancus to Cicero, he castigates Cicero's strategy of elevating Octavian, who was by then well known to be seeking one of the vacant consulships and, by inaction, allowing Antony to regain strength. Three weeks after this last letter, Octavian's soldiers marched on Rome and engineered his