“But it was I who used the Alpheus—”
“Yes; no doubt. But the impudence of expecting me to pay a tenth of all my flocks and herds for an idea so simple that I should have thought of it myself, if you hadn’t, just by chance, happened to think of it before me! You have not earned your wages. You cleaned the stable by an unfair trick: and it was the river cleaned it—not you.”
“Very well,” said Hercules, grimly. “If you had paid me honestly, I would have given you your goats and your oxen back again; for, as I told you, I do not serve for reward. But now I perceive that I have not quite cleaned your stable. There is still one piece of dirt left in it—and that is a cheating knave, Augeas by name. So, as I cannot go back to Mycenæ till my work is done—”
He was about to throw Augeas into the river, to follow the rest of the litter: and about what afterwards happened, different people tell different things. I very strongly agree, however, with those who tell that Hercules spared the life of Augeas after having given him a lesson: for certainly he was not worth the killing. And I am the more sure of this because, after his death, Augeas was honored as hero—which surely would not have happened if he had not learned to keep both his stables and his promises clean before he died.
PART VII.—MORE LABORS: AND THE CATTLE OF GERYON.
EURYSTHEUS was getting to his wits’ end for work which should keep his cousin employed. He sent him to kill the man-eating birds of Lake Stymphalus; to catch, and bring to Mycenæ alive, a wild bull which was devastating Crete; to obtain for Eurystheus the famous mares which fed on human flesh, and belonged to the Thracian King Diomedes, who used to throw men and women alive into their manger. In three years’ time Hercules destroyed all the birds, and brought to Mycenæ both the bull and the mares, to whom he had given the body of their master.
These were the sixth, seventh, and eighth labors, which had taken eight years. The ninth was of a different kind. There lived in the country of Cappadocia, which is in Asia, a nation of women, without any men among them. They were called the Amazons, and were famous for their skill in hunting, and for their fierceness and courage in war, conquering the neighboring nations far and wide. Their queen at this time was Hippolyta; and Eurystheus bade Hercules bring him Queen Hippolyta’s girdle. Perhaps he thought that a strong man would be ashamed to put out his strength against a woman. If so, however, he reckoned wrongly. Hercules had to do his work, whether man or woman stood in the way; and he won the queen’s girdle in fair fight, without harming the queen.
“I must send Hercules to the very end of the earth,” thought poor Eurystheus, who grew more and more frightened by every new success of his cousin. So he inquired diligently of every traveler who came to Mycenæ, and in time had the good luck to hear of a suitable monster named Geryon, who lived in a cave at Gades, now called Cadiz, on the coast of Spain, very near indeed to what the Greeks then thought to be the end of the world. Geryon, so the travelers reported, had three bodies and three heads, and kept large and valuable flocks and herds. “That will be just the thing for Hercules!” thought Eurystheus. So he called from his brazen pot—
“Go to Gades, and get me the cattle and the sheep of Geryon.”
So Hercules set off for Spain by way of Egypt and that great Libyan desert through which Perseus had passed on his adventure against the Gorgons. It was an unfortunate way to take, for there reigned over Egypt at that time King Busiris, who had made a law that every foreigner entering the country should be sacrificed to Jupiter. Hercules, knowing nothing of this law, was taken by surprise as soon as he landed, overpowered by numbers, bound in iron chains, and laid upon the altar to be slain. But scarcely had the sacrificing priest raised his knife when Hercules burst the chains, and, being no longer taken at disadvantage, made a sacrifice of Busiris and his ministers, thus freeing the land of Egypt from a foolish and cruel law.