Quote Help

[flertbert]

I’m trying to remember a quote by a Greek/Roman author. I don’t remember his name nor the exact quote. The gist of the quote is about his time in military service and about how just as they were starting to come together as a unit, they’d be reorganized, and that this process was repeated several times until the writer realized that the only reason for them doing it was so that they could look like they were doing something. Anyone have any guesses as to who might have said it and what the original quote might be?

[RM_Mentock]

It would help to put a little info in the thread title. “Greek/Roman” or “ancient history” might attract someone who knows a little about the subject.

[flertbert]

*Originally posted by RM Mentock *
**It would help to put a little info in the thread title. “Greek/Roman” or “ancient history” might attract someone who knows a little about the subject. **

Thanks, I suppose I e-mail a mod about this?

[tomndebb]

We trained very hard. But it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

Gaius Petronius Arbiter, *Satyricon* (1st century)

HOWEVER:

While the Satyricon was a genuine Roman work of the first century attributed to G. Petronius Arbiter, I find the language in this “quote” to be rather unlike any other Latin texts from the period (even assuming that it was translated into modern idiom). The quote looks suspiciously like something that was written specifically to puncture modern business practices and then attributed to a hard-to-find work. (Penguin Classics put out an edition in 1965 and someone named Loeb produced a facing-page Latin-English pony of it in 1913.)

I would love to know whether this quote appears in the Satyricon, but I can only provide the text, not the bonafides.

[Sternvogel]

**I would love to know whether this quote appears in the Satyricon, but I can only provide the text, not the bonafides. **

According to the Petronian Society Newsletter, the quote appears to have been fabricated by a British soldier sent to Germany during the post-1945 Allied occupation. Tellingly, the originator (or, perhaps, popularizer) did not even bother to compose the “original” Latin version of the passage:

http://www.people.memphis.edu/~mhooker/sullivan_article.html

[tomndebb]

An additional note on the real Petronius:

The EB says that the real name of Gaius Petronius Arbiter was Titus (not Gaius) Petronius Niger. He was a member of Nero’s court and was, at one time, named the “arbiter of elegance” and that he then used the name Titus Petronius Arbiter as his nom de plume when he wrote the Satyricon.