The sentence belongs to Tacitus, not Cicero. It condenses the closing line of Annals Book III, 27 — corruptissima re publica plurimae leges — which the Latin text at Perseus ↗ carries verbatim, and which Wikiquote lists under “Misattributed” on its Cicero page ↗, noting it is “Truly from Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27.” No named translator produced this exact English wording: the 1876 Church & Brodribb rendering reads “laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.”
“The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government” Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27: "laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt" (trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, 1876). Latin: "corruptissima re publica plurimae leges." The popular epigram "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government" is a condensed English rendering of that sentence — it is not Cicero; Wikiquote lists the Cicero credit under "Misattributed." Traced by Quotle.info, 27 Aug 2026.
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Provenance
What the record shows
Popularly credited to
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) — misattributed
Actually from
The Annals, Book III, 27
Author
Tacitus, c. AD 56–c. 120; the Annals written c. AD 105–116
Translation
Alfred John Church & William Jackson Brodribb, 1876
Even the Italian and then the Civil war did not pass without the enactment of many conflicting laws, till Lucius Sulla, the Dictator, by the repeal or alteration of past legislation and by many additions, gave us a brief lull in this process, to be instantly followed by the seditious proposals of Lepidus, and soon afterwards by the tribunes recovering their license to excite the people just as they chose. And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.
Annals, Book III, 27 — closing sentences
The Latin of the final clause: iamque non modo in commune sed in singulos homines latae quaestiones, et corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. The popular English epigram compresses those last five words.
📜
Church & Brodribb Annals, Macmillan printing (scanned)
The Latin is in the text itself: Perseus’ edition of Annales 3.27 ↗ closes the chapter with …et corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
In English, Wikisource’s Book 3 ↗, whose header gives the translation as Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876), renders the clause “laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.”
The Cicero credit is expressly rejected: Wikiquote’s Cicero page ↗ carries the line in its Misattributed section, sourcing it to Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27.
Wikiquote’s Tacitus page ↗ gives our exact wording as the headline translation under Book III, 27, alongside the variants “The more corrupt the state, the more laws” and the fuller Church & Brodribb sentence — three renderings of one Latin clause.
✓Public domain
Tacitus wrote the Annals in Latin around AD 105–116, so the original text is long out of copyright. The English excerpt shown here is the Church & Brodribb translation, dated 1876 in the Wikisource edition ↗ — published well before 1931 and therefore public domain in the United States. The short popular epigram has no identified translator, but it renders that same public-domain Latin sentence; we found no modern copyrighted translation it derives from.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How it got pinned on Cicero
Cicero is one of the internet’s most reliable magnets for lines he never wrote, and this is one of them. The sentence belongs to a writer of the next era: Cicero died in 43 BC, an orator and statesman of the Republic, while Tacitus was born around AD 56 and wrote his history under the Empire.
Wikiquote ↗ places this line in the Misattributed section of its Cicero page, with the note “Truly from Tacitus, Annals, Book III, 27.” The Latin sentence is present in the text of Tacitus at Perseus ↗. Cicero was a statesman, lawyer and orator, not a historian of the imperial age.
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The wording“The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government” condensed rendering
No translator is named for this exact English sentence; it circulates as a free rendering of five Latin words. The 1876 Church & Brodribb translation at Wikisource ↗ reads instead: “laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.” The popular version also reverses the order of the clauses, so that many laws read as the cause rather than corruption as the setting.
The most-shared “Cicero” passage of all — “The budget should be balanced; the treasury should be refilled” — was, Quote Investigator found ↗, constructed by Taylor Caldwell for her 1965 novel A Pillar of Iron, with no substantive evidence Cicero spoke or wrote the words. Roman gravitas plus a familiar name is a durable formula.
✓The real story: the sentence is Tacitus’s, from the excursus on the history of Roman law in Annals Book III, 27 ↗ — corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Context
Why Tacitus wrote it
The line closes an excursus. In Annals Book III, with the senate wrangling over Augustus’ marriage legislation, Tacitus breaks off to tell the whole history of Roman law: the expulsion of Tarquin, the Decemvirs, the Twelve Tables — which he calls the last specimen of equitable legislation — then the Gracchi, the Social and Civil wars, Sulla’s repeals and additions, and the tribunes recovering their licence. Only after that ledger of decline does he land the epigram.
Read in context it is not a slogan about regulation but a verdict on a political class. Tacitus’ Latin makes rampant corruption the circumstance in which laws multiplied; the popular English flips the clauses so that many laws appear to cause the corruption. Both readings point at the same target — law used to settle scores rather than to do justice — but only one of them is the sentence he wrote.
Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.
What scholars make of the passage
The excursus at Annals 3.25–28 is unusual: ancient writers rarely attacked law as such. Stefan Krauter’s 2024 study in Religion in the Roman Empire, “Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges” ↗, treats Tacitus’ account of the history of law as one of two notable exceptions in antiquity, alongside Paul’s negative statements about the law, and describes the excursus as displaying a remarkably sceptical attitude towards laws.
The Annals was Tacitus’ final work, written around AD 105–116 and covering the empire from the accession of Tiberius in AD 14 to the death of Nero in AD 68. Book III sits early in that arc, under Tiberius.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
c. AD 56–c. 120 · Roman senator, consul & historian
Publius Cornelius Tacitus — his praenomen is disputed, with manuscripts giving Publius and Sidonius Apollinaris giving Gaius — climbed the Roman senate under the very emperors he would later dissect, holding a suffect consulship in AD 97 and the proconsulship of Asia in 112–113. His Annals, his last and largest work, narrates the empire from AD 14 to 68 in a compressed, mordant Latin built for exactly this kind of epigram. He is not Cicero: Cicero was a Republican orator and statesman who died in 43 BC, before the Empire that Tacitus chronicled had even begun.
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Cite this
Primary source
Tacitus, The Annals, bk. 3, chap. 27, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876; London: Macmillan): "And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt." Latin: "iamque non modo in commune sed in singulos homines latae quaestiones, et corruptissima re publica plurimae leges" (Perseus Digital Library, Annales 3.27). The attribution to Cicero is listed under "Misattributed" on the Cicero page at Wikiquote.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-more-numerous-the-laws-the-more-corrupt-the-government/