LatinLanguage.us

A few days ago I wrote a post that said–among other things–that the mis-appropriation of classical history/literature by Afro-centric supporters in 1980’s-90’s academia to support their modern political agenda was not a unique sin. And just this weekend Patricia de Lille, leader of the Independent Democrats in the South African government, used a familiar political quote attributed to Cicero in accusing the party of the African National Congress of becoming a haven for corruption:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even their ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.”

It amazes me how often this quote is used by the politically active, even by those on opposite sides of an issue. The complete quote–of which Ms. de Lille’s sentence is but the opening–can be found on numerous websites, a patina of ancient wisdom to burnish a wobbly and sometimes vile argument. I’m not linking to any of those here; if you are really interested, just Google “A nation can survive its fools” and page thru the nearly 50,000 hits.

The problem is, Cicero never said this or anything like it. I have scanned most of his political corpus and have yet to come across any lengthy statement about treason, let alone one so carefully tailored to false accusation. But Cicero himself used terms like proditor/proditio and perduellio to insult his political opponents, so perhaps these websites are preserving an ancient tradition after all.

Finally, to underscore the echo-chamber that is the internet, many sites report the date for this supposed utterance as “42 BC"–quite a trick since Antony’s men executed the orator in December of 43. There’s a good lesson here…