Power or Downfall .

     Lewis is right in pointing up the frequently shoddy and 
immature inspiration of much of this:

          The Republican would call himself Brutus, the 
     littérateur  would be Cicero, and so forth. They attempted 
     to bring to life the heroes of antiquity, and recall in their 
     own lives the events recorded in the codices, and it was 
     this immediate application of everything to life in Italian 
     Renaissance society (like the substitution of a cinema for 
     a history-book in a school) that made the Italian influence 
     so vivid in the rest of Europe. Renaissance Italy was very 
     exactly a kind of Los Angeles, where historical scenes 
     were tried out, antique buildings imitated and roughly run 
     up, and dramatic crimes reconstructed.