[Bonnie]

In a letter to The Chicago Tribune (20 April 1971), John H. Collins, Professor of History at Northern Illinois University, reported that the following attribution to Cicero,

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. The mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence.

actually originated in A Pillar of Iron (1965), Taylor Caldwell's fictionalized account of the life of the senator. (In fact, Collins noted that it was on page 483 of the edition he had in hand.)

Collins held that the alleged quotation "is totally without documentation," and that "the great bulk of [Caldwell's] quotations are false." He further observed that "[a] historical novelist has a perfect right to put invented conversations and anecdotes into a novel, but should not represent these inventions as authentic history."

-- Bonnie