Would the Real Petronius Arbiter Please Stand Up?

The PowerPoint presentation I was watching had a quote about reorganization that caught my eye. Actually, the quotee and the date of the quote caught my eye:

    It seemed 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 a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. 

-Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.    

    

I was so taken with the quote that I decided to do a little research on Mr. Arbiter. I liked the way he thought. I was impressed with how discerning he was and how relevant his B.C. thinking was in my 2005 world.

Oh how Google can break your heart. It took just two minutes to burst my bubble. Mr. Arbiter evidently didn't have this brilliant insight in the year 210 B.C.  Giving Mr. Aribeter credit for this quote is like saying that Haagen Daz ice cream is European. Evidently, it's just brilliant marketing. At least that's the position of one Jim Reeds who has dedicated a web page to document his research on why the quote is a fake.

The page documents many of the sources that have helped create this urban myth, and it provides Mr. Reed's explanation for why he believes it was not Mr. Arbiter, but rather a bulletin board joke, which created this much, sought after quote.

"...it seems more likely he is simply an early continuator into print of a long-standing bulletin-board joke. Many correspondents, most notably Richard Dengrove, have told me about a note by J. P. Sullivan in the May 1981 Petronian Society Newsletter (12(1), p.1) addressing this important question. Quoting (without permission):... let me give my tentative account, which I hope other readers can correct, of its provenance. Some disgruntled soldier of a literary bent, whether commissioned or noncommissioned I do not know, pinned this “quotation” to a bulletin board in one of the camps of the armies occupying Germany sometime after 1945 (the style suggests a British occupying force). Since the sentiment is impeccable, whether applied to military, governmental, or academic administration, it has enjoyed a cachet borrowed from Petronius ever since.”

Oh, Petronius, were it but you? And if thou aren't, would the real Petronius Arbiter please stand up?