But he returned the next day, as fresh and untroubled as when he had started, with the hide of the Nemean lion slung over his shoulder.
"Are yours magic arrows, and is your club charmed as well?" the youths who were Hercules' friends asked, crowding around him.
"I killed the lion with my hands alone, grasping him about his throat," Hercules explained to them.
Eurystheus, listening on the edge of the crowd, frowned at these words. "I must plan a greater labor for him," he thought.
There was a rich and beautiful city of Greece named Argos, but a fearful monster called the Hydra infested a swamp just outside it and one never knew when it would descend upon the well that supplied the people with pure water. It had nine heads and one of these was immortal, so the rumor went.
"Go to Argos and kill the Hydra," Eurystheus commanded Hercules.
Hercules was ready to dare this adventure. He started out again with no other arms than he had carried before and when he came to the well of Argos which kept the country from drought, he found the Hydra stationed there. Going up to it, Hercules struck off one of its heads with his club. What was his surprise to see two heads grow in the place of this one! It was going to be a task to destroy this creature, Hercules understood, as he laid on with his club against the menacing and increasing heads, hitting right and left and with no time between his telling blows. He struck off all of the Hydra's heads at last except the undying one. Finally Hercules thought of a plan for destroying this. He wrenched it off with his mighty hands and buried it deeply underneath a rock.
"Hercules shall be put to a task he will not like so well as encountering wild beasts," Eurystheus decided then. "He shall clean the Augean stables. We will see if a son of the gods has the will to accomplish that labor."
This was indeed a labor with very little of the spirit of adventure in it. Old King Augeus, of Elis in Greece had a herd of three thousand cattle and their stalls in his many stables had not been cleaned for thirty years. The cattle, all of them of blooded stock, were dying off because they were not properly cared for, and there was no hero of the king's train but felt the work of cleaning the stables to be too menial for him.
Hercules had no such thought as this, however. He was ready to attempt the labor; his only idea was how to accomplish it, and thoroughly. At last he had a very novel idea.