I'll guess X=Livy — as he was a "professional" historian (one of Veblen's non-governing elites?) and therefore more likely to produce Gell-Mann (non)Amnesia moments.
[It's interesting to see the difference between quotes attributed to N1 on {de,en,fr} websites: in fr they sound pretty accurate (some fraction are lifted from Cicero or other classical authors); in de they're enriched in those that either concern germany itself or the hassle of dealing with idiots all day; in en just about anything gets his name slapped on it. ("87% of all statistics are just made up — Napoleon Bonaparte")]
That said, even though Cicero was in government, Livy seems to have been a tad more cynical (small-c, modern sense) than Cicero, so I could be wrong. Alongside the lifted-from-Cicero quotes, one also finds more machiavellian expressions:
[It's interesting to see the difference between quotes attributed to N1 on {de,en,fr} websites: in fr they sound pretty accurate (some fraction are lifted from Cicero or other classical authors); in de they're enriched in those that either concern germany itself or the hassle of dealing with idiots all day; in en just about anything gets his name slapped on it. ("87% of all statistics are just made up — Napoleon Bonaparte")]
That said, even though Cicero was in government, Livy seems to have been a tad more cynical (small-c, modern sense) than Cicero, so I could be wrong. Alongside the lifted-from-Cicero quotes, one also finds more machiavellian expressions:
> “Le peuple est le même partout. Quand on dore ses fers, il ne hait pas la servitude.” (People are everywhere alike. Give them golden handcuffs, and they don't hate their subjection) https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k65037972/f113.image.r...