Imagine Mussolini three times as handsome and four times as preposterous, and you have the drama’s hero, Cola di Rienzo, self-proclaimed tribune of Rome, fantasist extraordinaire, and local hero. For smashing the Mafia-style rule of Rome’s old noble families, the populus romanus were willing to forgive their handsome Cola almost anything, including the fantasy that he was the bastard son of a German emperor instead of the peasant son of a barkeep.
