"Here will I found a city," boomed Hercules. "In later years, great leaders will come here in the name of the Caesars, my equals in Olympus!"

Even granting that his mask contained a resonating chamber, the fellow's voice was impressive. Pulto must have been thinking the same thing, because he muttered, "That one's got the lungs of a first centurion on him. Wish he wasn't dressed like a clown, though."

Corylus chuckled. "I quite agree with you, old friend," he said, "but the impresario had literary justification for each of his choices. Well, a kind of justification. Probably because writers in the past were just as determined as Saxa is to give their audiences the most impressive show they could."

The Hercules of ancient legend carried a plain oak branch for a club and wore a lion-skin cloak. Later myth made the skin that of the gigantic Nemean lion, sprung from the blood of the monster Typhon. No writer before now had suggested that the lion's skin had been sprinkled with gold dust so that the spectators in the highest seats of the theater could see it sparkle, but Corylus supposed that might be an aspect which had simply gone unremarked in the past.

Euripides had given Heracles a brazen club, the gift of the god Hephaestus. Saxa had gone the Greek one better by gilding the club, but either metal was too sophisticated for the rustic hero.

Heracles' armor-here golden-and the shield banded with gold, silver and ivory had even more ancient evidence: the poet Hesiod, second in time and-some said-second in literary importance to Homer himself.

Even a great writer could come up with a bad idea in search of an effect, though. When one did, he opened a passage through which a Replacement Consul of the future could drive whole herds of absurdity.