Having tracked the animal to his lurking place after chasing him through the deep snow, Hercules caught him in a net and bore him away in triumph on his shoulders to the feet of the amazed Eurystheus.
Augeas, King of Elis, in Greece, not far from Mount Olympus, owned a herd of oxen 3,000 in number. They were stabled in stables that had not been cleaned out for thirty years. The stench was terrible and greatly troubled the health of the land. Eurystheus set Hercules the task of cleaning out these Augean stables in a single day!
But the wit of the hero was equal to the occasion. With his great strength he diverted the flow of two rivers that ran their courses near the stables and made them flow right through the stables themselves, and lo! the nuisance that had been growing for thirty years was no more! Such was the fifth labor of Hercules.
On an island in a lake near Stymphalus, in Arcadia, there nested in those days some remarkable and terrible birds—remarkable because their claws, wings and beaks were brazen, and terrible because they fed on human flesh and attacked with their terrible beaks and claws all who came near the lake. To kill these dreadful birds was the sixth labor.
Minerva supplied Hercules with a brazen rattle with which he roused the birds from their nests, and then slew them with his poisoned arrows while they were on the wing.
This victory made Hercules popular throughout the whole of Greece, and Eurystheus saw that nothing he could devise was too hard for the hero to accomplish.
The seventh labor was to capture a mad bull that the Sea-god Neptune had let loose in the island of Crete, of which island Minos was at that time King.
This ferocious creature breathed out from his nostrils a whirlwind of flaming fire. But Hercules was, as you no doubt have guessed, too much for the brazen bull.
He not only caught the monster, but tamed him, and bore him aloft on his shoulders, into the presence of the affrighted Eurystheus, who was at a loss to find a task impossible for Hercules to perform.