In a previous newsletter message on Pillar of Iron (the 3rd I wrote on Taylor Caldwell's only four part novel), I promised/threatened to have a 4th newsletter on this massive novel. I claim I am justified for many reasons. For one there is an Open Road e-book sale on it. I will list a few others.

At this time this is the only TC novel for which we, the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell, have a movie contract in the works. Further, I understand the script writer's intended theme to feature Cicero's hope for a Messiah as foretold in the Hebrew Old Testament.
It is such a complicated and long period, that those who didn't grow up with some sense of this history would be justified in having considerable confusion about it (see below).
TC's intelligence here is at an extreme, probably taxing most of her readers: So many threads, so many historical (and fabricated) personages, so many historical events, so many locations in antiquity, that despite the coherence of the narrative it has to be overwhelming.
TC's desire to weave conservative lessons on evil that could resonate with stories she colored with her insistence on the evils of modern government.

*|FNAME|*, I'm going to comment on each item in this list before we get to the Open Road promotion of Pillar of Iron.

#1: Christianity, the Old and New Testaments, and the significance of Pagan Religion:
Romans were superstitious. So are we, though the comparison there was government sanctioned, and woven with the prestige of official positions. Julius Caeser, so significant a personage in history, was Pontifex Maximus. After that and Roman Consul, the sky had to be the limit for him.

He traced his family history through Venus and his patronage through Jupiter. Do, you believe that brave, cunning, power hungry bundle of energy believed in those Roman gods. You bet he did! He even aspired to be a god himself. If, as TC insists there is never any progress, except through our God, just how did Cicero and Caesar manage to picture themselves within this earnest framework?

#2: What helps to get a handle on this history?
*|FNAME|*, have you been to the Roman Thermal works in Bath? Have you seen the aquaduct that runs through Paris, or the catacombs under Notre Dame? How about the old city of Jerusalem, where at the Jaffa Gate you are greeted by the remains of the Herodian Temple (not that built by Solomon) destroyed by the Romans, or the resurrected market stalls in the Roman road that ran through the old city? Have you ever walked on Hadrian's wall between England and Scotland?

At each of these, you will find European (and some American) tourists still amazed at these magnificent Roman works, running through their everyday lives. English tourists pass through a trail of museums along Hadrian's wall discussing Verkingetorix a rebel against Rome, though 2000 years ago, as you or I might discuss Grant and Lee while visiting Montecello.

Now imagine how much more overwhelming would be a visit to Rome where the density of Roman resurrections is akin to an old house lived in for hundreds of years. So many inches of layer upon layer of period wallpaper. Each millimeter representing real families and lives, legends, hopes and aspirations. The Romans lived. Indeed, they were never gone!

#3: I think TC would have been non-plussed at the abstract Open Road put below.
No, this was not the end of the Roman Empire. The description is the end of the Roman Republic. The empire under Augustus Caesar has yet to come. Rome in those days, wasn't even the wealthiest of the Mediterranean countries. That would have been Egypt. This story doesn't even come to Constantine's adaptation of Christianity, nor the Nicaeia council that tried but failed to put an end to the Arian heresy, and produced the Nicene Creed read in so many churches each Sunday.

No, there were hundreds of years of brutality left under the Roman Regime, and a thousand years of Orthodox Christianity that is still with us in Eastern Europe. All of those struggles with how monotheism gives us all today a vision of the world that no Roman then had.

Even TC waxes enthusiastic over the Parthenon, with over a 3rd of that hefty novel left. She calls it the supreme result that the human mind will ever create.

Alas, even her febrile imagination would have a lot to dismiss in considering the GPS (one fruit of general relativity theory), lasers (a surpreme gift from quantum mechanics) and our knowledge of our immediate and far past (here in the early days of using the sequencing of the genome).

How about those who dismiss the significance of everything that they either don't desire or fail to perfectly fathom. Well, ultimately they end up dismissing everything of substance.

#4: Speaking of Substance: How about the substance of evil.
There's something Junior Highish that still persists in those who mindlessly diss people, calling them names, dismissing those they don't like. It makes me wonder about people. Empty abstract words, mostly from people with not keenly developed ability to abstract much, thrown at those they don't like. What exactly makes them do it, when they can hardly articulate what is right in front of them?

If TC strove for any particular goal in her many novels, it was to personify evil. Others have tried it, too. Indeed, it seeems pretty common today in American life.

Alas, there is one problem in speaking in the name of Christianity. Jesus, or so I understand, tried to find ways around personifying evil.

In Pillar of Iron the personification of evil is Catiline. The historical record isn't complete, so TC uses her own devices to fill in the empty spaces. If I were to teach an English class, and if I were to use TC's novel, I would ask students to what extent they would accept Catiline as a successful token of evil as they know it?

A Pillar of Iron

By Taylor Caldwell

$1.99 $19.99

EXPIRES 6/28/20

Bestseller, Historical Fiction

New York Times bestseller

A magnificent novel of ancient Rome and the tragic life of Cicero, who tried in vain to save the republic he loved from tyranny. Here, the Roman Empire in its final glory is seen through the eyes of philosopher, orator, and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero.

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Michael Fried, Grandson
For the Descendants of Taylor Caldwell
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