“How?” said Heracles. “Have I not performed two of the labors? Have I not slain the lion of Nemea and the great water snake of Lerna?”
“In the killing of the water snake you were helped by Iolaus,” said the king, snapping out his words and looking at Heracles with shifting eyes. “That labor cannot be allowed you.”
Heracles would have struck him to the ground. But then he remembered that the crime that he had committed in his madness would have to be expiated by labors performed at the order of this man. He looked full upon Eurystheus and he said, “Tell me of the other labors, and I will go forth from Mycenæ and accomplish them.”
Then Eurystheus bade him go and make clean the stables of [pg 229] King Augeias. Heracles came into that king’s country. The smell from the stables was felt for miles around. Countless herds of cattle and goats had been in the stables for years, and because of the uncleanness and the smell that came from it the crops were withered all around. Heracles told the king that he would clean the stables if he were given one tenth of the cattle and the goats for a reward.
The king agreed to this reward. Then Heracles drove the cattle and the goats out of the stables; he broke through the foundations and he made channels for the two rivers Alpheus and Peneius. The waters flowed through the stables, and in a day all the uncleanness was washed away. Then Heracles turned the rivers back into their own courses.
He was not given the reward he had bargained for, however.
He went back to Mycenæ with the tale of how he had cleaned the stables. “Ten labors remain for me to do now,” he said.
“Eleven,” said Eurystheus. “How can I allow the cleaning of King Augeias’s stables to you when you bargained for a reward for doing it?”
Then while Heracles stood still, holding himself back from striking him, Eurystheus ran away and hid himself in the jar. Through his heralds he sent word to Heracles, telling him what the other labors would be.
He was to clear the marshes of Stymphalus of the man-eating birds that gathered there; he was to capture and bring [pg 230] to the king the golden-horned deer of Coryneia; he was also to capture and bring alive to Mycenæ the boar of Erymanthus.