Cicero Photo © Clipart.com
My initial response is that the attribution of the following quotation to Cicero makes no sense on many different levels, but I am aware that if something seems obvious to me, I may be missing subtleties that would lead to a different conclusion, so if you think this is legitimate, please post in the comments.
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
Cicero - 55 BC
Comments
I haven’t verified this but it seems to be a consensus where ever I find it:”It originated in a fictional biography of Cicero called A Pillar of Iron (1965) by Taylor Caldwell. It’s on page 483 and its completely fake.”
Historyfanatic – Thanks!
general scuttlebut on the internet says that it’s actually from ‘A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell, and certainly the tiny excerpts that Google Books is letting me see would correlate with that notion:
http://books.google.com/books?id=4C4yAAAAIAAJ&q=bankrupt#search_anchor
However, a bit of a scan through De Officiis does yield a few candidates which might have inspired this passage, eg book II section 84 with references to Caesar’s handing out of land.
Had a trawl through De Re Publica with no success.
I found it in chapter 15 of Caldwell’s book, but it’s indirect speech. Rough translation: “[Gaius] Antonius [Hybrida] was in complete agreement with Cicero that the budget had to be balanced, public debt reduced, aid to foreign lands curtailed, and that the people should not depend on government for subsistence.”
It was turned into direct speech by a politician in the US House of Representatives in 1968. See here (right page, lower right hand side): http://www.archive.org/stream/congressionalrec114dunit#page/n631/mode/1up
So Congressman Passman added a thing or two himself and must be regarded as the co-creator of the fake Cicero quote.
Reagan also seems to have liked it. See the discussion at Roger Pearse’s blog here: http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=5543
God, I hope not. It sounds more like an American presidential candidate.
The Roman budget was always more or less balanced; there was no public debt; arrogant officials were brought to account at the end of their one year terms; Rome derived income from its ‘foreign lands’; this leaves the grain dole which Cicero indeed opposed.
I’ve read most of Cicero except for the letters. When I saw this quotation posted somewhere, I thought it unfamiliar and began looking around to see if it was in fact Ciceronian. It appears not to be so.