Roman Philosopher Cicero Predicting The Future

I've mentioned several times that Alma, the Songbird of the Texas Gulf Coast, sends me a lot of real amusing, interesting stuff. Every once in awhile Alma sends something that just seems too good to be true.

Like this morning.

An email with a quote from the Roman Philosopher, Cicero.

In the subject line it said, "What have we learned in 2 Millennia?"

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Cicero - 55 BC

And then the punch line to the what have we learned question, "Evidently Nothing!!!"

The 2 red flags for me were the part about assistance to foreign lands and people living on public assistance. Rome occupied foreign lands and extracted wealth from them. Rome didn't operate an American style foreign aid program. Rome had a lot of slaves, there was no welfare program.

Several websites deal with this erroneous Cicero quote. With several people saying they liked fictional Cicero.

The closest Cicero came to uttering the fictional quote is when he said, “The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.”

Despite the fictional quote not being what Cicero said, the punch line sure rings true. It does seem, at times, that in 2000 years the world has evidently learned nothing. Or very little. We had religious crazies killing and maiming people back then, we have them now. Only now they have machine guns and rocket launchers. And Internet websites.