Cicero on fixing the economy

[snopes]

Comment: This quote is going around the internet. I would like to know if
it really came from Cicero as claimed.

"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

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Assistance to foreign lands? Rome? That's hilarious!

The usual manner by which Rome "reduced its public debt" was by making war on some foreign land, pillaging widely, and bringing back thousands of slaves.

Silas

[Ariadne]

Here is something rather similar to the sentiment in the last sentence, from Cicero's Speech in Defense of Sestius (48.103, translated by Jo-Ann Shelton):

Gaius Gracchus proposed a grain law. The people were delighted with it because it provided an abundance of food without work. The good men, however, fought against it because they thought the masses would be attracted away from hard work and toward idleness, and they saw the state treasury would be exhausted.

Like Silas said, I do find the assistance to foreign lands bit a little odd. If I get my homework done tonight, I'll look for more.

[Ariadne]

I asked my husband, who knows much more about Cicero than I do; he looked it up and found nothing. He also said that there are no extant works by Cicero from 60 BCE, so the date is wrong unless it is from a fragment. The quote itself is not taken from any translation that he could find.

[ganzfeld]

Respect "reestablished" for the religion of Cicero's Rome... Now that might be interesting.

[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

[ganzfeld]

Bonnie rocks. I'm just saying.

[Bonnie]

Gosh, thanks for that, ganzfield, though I have to say that real credit goes to Prof. Collins (wherever he may be). Thanks also to Ariadne and Mr. Ariadne for taking on the challenge too.

Bonnie "Taylor Caldwell, graduate of the S.G. Tallentyre School of Writing" Taylor

[Chloe]

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

Assistance to foreign lands? Rome? That's hilarious!

The usual manner by which Rome "reduced its public debt" was by making war on some foreign land, pillaging widely, and bringing back thousands of slaves.

Silas

Bonnie's debunking is, as usual, comprehensive, but apart from that assistance could plausibly mean "defense of," so that, according to Bede, when Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain, for instance, the Celts found themselves at the mercy of no-goods like the Picts and Scots, and appealed to Rome for help. Such help not being forthcoming, appeals were instead made to the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and the rest is Historia Ecclesiastica.

[Ariadne]

Originally Posted by Bonnie

Gosh, thanks for that, ganzfield, though I have to say that real credit goes to Prof. Collins (wherever he may be). Thanks also to Ariadne and Mr. Ariadne for taking on the challenge too.

Bonnie "Taylor Caldwell, graduate of the S.G. Tallentyre School of Writing" Taylor

Awww, shucks. :o

ETA: But yeah, you do rock, Bonnie.

[matches]

Given that "public assistance" as it were was really the only thing that seperated one from Citizen or Barbarian in ancient Rome, I doubt a politician of Cicero's stature would touch that third rail of politics.

Likewise I don't know of any foreign lands that recieved assistance from Rome, except perhaps in the form of Centurions who shipped your goods, people, and wealth back to rome to be used as the citizens of Rome saw fit, in exchange for roads and garrisons and aquaducts to facilitate that transfer.

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Well, one is tempted to quote from "The Life of Brian." The Romans gave a lot of good things to the (survivors in the) lands they conquered: laws, civic works, military protection, etc. All you had to give up was your freedom...

But, aye, Rome never gave "foreign aid" from its treasury. When it ran short of gold, that was when it went on another campaign of conquest.

If memory serves, Cicero was fond of whingeing about corruption, however. There was a great plenty of that in Rome at that time -- and, come to think of it, ever since, right down to this very day!

Silas

[PointySextant]

This suggests to me that it is not Cicero.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2Tu3bScwKKAC&pg=PT179&lpg=PT179&dq="The+budget+should+be+balanced,+the+Treasury+should +be+refilled,+public&source=web&ots=xtOQEKRY6q&sig=ZM2YxEtKj6rlgKQgO4EpoSNaQdU&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result

Wanting a second opinion, I consulted my mother who is a professor of the classics and very good at recognizing these things, and she is of the opinion that this is more likely a statement by Cato and not Cicero, based on the sentiments expressed and the structure of the language when translated to classical Latin oration.

It’s something Cicero might have said, except for the spurious reference to assistance to foreign lands. The problem with quoting Cicero is that although he aimed at the restoration of “traditional values”, he could never detach himself from a corrupt, incompetent, effete aristocracy or resist resorting to the very tactics he condemned in his opponents. His self-contradictions make him a failure as a conservative role model.

[matches]

Originally Posted by peneshaw

His self-contradictions make him a failure as a conservative role model.

As political role models go, I doubt you can find many without self-contradictions.

Likewise, as our current political parties are non-ideology based, discussing liberals or conservatives in general is always a little self contradictatory.

There are not a lot of pure men or women in politics, as politics itself is always an art of compromise.

[PointySextant]

I have searched JSTOR, EBSCO, and every other archive I can think of for this quote and come up with nothing. I also had it translated into modern and classical latin and ran it through google and came up with nothing. But my search has not been entirely fruitless. I have consulted with my translator du jour and with a professor of the classics over EBSCo, and they do have some points to make off the record.

1. The quote does not sound like Cicero. It more than anyone sounds like a Cato, with the translator betting on Younger.

2. That said, neither of them recalls either Cato or Cicero ever saying anything like this, and so they think the quote a little suspect.

3.That said, they think it is entirely possible that Cicero could have said it in one of his speeches, but that it was so overshadowed by another quote or event we know all too well that it has been forgotten.

4. But, and this is a big one, all that in mind, there is a problem with attributing "unknown" quotes to Cicero. Cicero is the great Roman rhetorical master. His life, sayings, and doings have beens so thoroughly researched, documented, and examined that it is highly unlikely that anything new about him or from him is going to come out without a publicized and recognized accompanying archeological find to go with it. He is just to important and well known a figure for things like this to slip past the radar.

As for Cicero's place as a role model for modern politicians, I think that using any Roman politician or leader as a role model is wrong headed because they sought consistency on completely different issues and subjects than we do. The distinction between popular and conservative party in Rome was not a question of any of the issues we debate about today. The questions, the fundamental issues they argued about were issues of fundamental constitutional reform on a level we never even imagine discussing, the true definition of citizenship and it's expansion or reduction, and the maintenance or elimination of a class system that was elaborate and nigh incomprehensible by the standards of any other society in history. The methods they advocated in the interest of achieving those goals were fluid and never expected to be consistent. The goal was what mattered. And they had goals we don't even consider in this day and age.

[Bonnie]

Thanks for that thoughtful and well-researched post, PointySextant!

A professor of history at Northern Illinois University has contended that this supposed ancient observation, credited to Cicero, is a recent invention,

http://message.snopes.com/showpost.p...02&postcount=6

I'm not familiar with Cicero's writings, but that we're unable to push this "quotation" back to a point before 1965 is telling, I think.

Bonnie "well, actually we did build it in a day!" Taylor