What have we learned in 2,066 years?

Science Chic wrote:

"Antonius heartily agreed with him [sc. Cicero] that the budget should be balanced, that the Treasury should be refilled, that the public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of the generals should be tempered and controlled, that assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt, that the mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence, and that prudence and frugality should be put into practice as soon as possible."

- A Pillar of Iron; this sentence is regularly attributed to Cicero, but it's Caldwell's own, not in Cicero's actual work. It can be found on page 483 of the 1965 edition published by Doubleday (Garden City, NY.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Caldwell
There's quite a few things that we've learned in 2,066 years. This, however, is just an opinion of a lady from 1965.
http://www.amazon.com/Pillar-Iron-Taylo ... B000O8C39E
1.0 out of 5 stars Oh, please...., November 7, 2008
By A. W. Schlaf (Des Moines, IA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Pillar of Iron (Paperback)

Honest to God, this book is just awful and on several levels.

I first read this at age 15 or 16 when I was in third year Latin in high school. Yeah, when I was reading Cicero in the original Latin. I went on to major in Classical Languages and history in college, reading even more Cicero and the history of his times then and the next forty some years.

In short, it is a travesty. Just the little coda at the end that has Cicero cooling his heels in Heaven's ante-room and thrilling to the sound of trumpets announcing the birth of Christ is enough to make any reasonable person, much less a trained Classicist, want to throw up in disgust.

However, the worst crime of this author and this book is the sad fact that wildly anachronistic passages from this book are now being bandied about on the internet as legit quotes of Cicero when they are nothing more than Caldwell's right wing screeds, having no basis in history and no understanding of Roman history or politics.

Normally, I am against book burning, but if it comes down to that, this POS needs to be the first on the pyre.