The Boar, The Stables, & The Birds

Coverpage - Introduction - The Lion, Hydra, & Stag - The Boar, Stables, & Birds - The Bull, Mares, & Girdle - The Cattle, Apples, & Cerberus


Hercules wrestling the BoarAs soon as I got back to Mycenae, Eurystheus sent me on yet another task: to catch the wild boar of Erymanthos alive!  This beast was much more violent and dangerous than the stag.  By this time, I was beginning to get quite tired from all these spectacular feats I had been performing, but I knew in order to regain my honor I must push forward. 

After a long, difficult journey through the hills, I finally found the boar near the top of a mountain.  I chased after him much like I did the stag, but he was also quite fast and much more ferocious.  I spent yet another year chasing after the beast until my efforts were cut short by a tremendous blizzard.  When I saw how high the snow was piled, I thought of a way to catch the boar and dug through the snow into his den.  When I finally got inside, the boar ran past me in a panic and got stuck in the snow.  After another brief struggle, I was able to tie up the boar and drag him back to King Eurystheus.  After returning to Mycenae I was able to get a short rest, but it was not long before my master, Eurystheus, had yet another epic task for me to perform.
Cleaning the Augean Stables
The next task Eurystheus set forth for me was to clean the stables owned by King Augeas and occupied by several hundred livestock.  The stables had never been cleaned and were quite well-known for the mountain of filth contained therein.  It had once been estimated that it would take a team of a dozen men one hundred years to clean the stables, simply because there was so much waste piled up!  Nonetheless, I set off to begin cleaning, knowing it would most likely take the rest of my life to complete.  Along the way, however, I set my mind to figuring out a way to complete the task in less time and created a rather ingenious plan. 

When I arrived, King Augeas offered me a reward should I complete the task of cleaning his stable, but I refused, replying that I was simply heeding the will of my master in order to regain my honor.  I immediately walked out of the stable and began digging a ditch leading from the door of the stable toward a nearby river.  When the ditch was complete, I simply diverted the water from the river into the ditch, and it rushed through the stables, leaving them spotless and bare.  Through the use of my wits, I had completed a lifelong task in less than one day!

Hercules scaring the BirdsWhen I returned to Mycenae, Eurystheus had yet another task for me:  to scare away the birds at Lake Stymphalia.  The Stymphalian birds had brass wings and feathers like spears; many people said they have even seen Stymphalian birds eat men.  While contemplating how to drive away the menacing birds, I prayed to the gods for help.  My faith was rewarded when Athena granted me a huge set of noise makers to scare the birds.

I crashed the noise makers together, making a terrible noise, and all the birds lept into the air.  I shot several of them with my poisonous arrows, and they fell to the earth, while the rest flew away over the horizon.

Upon completing this, my sixth labor in the name of Eurystheus, I returned to his palace in Mycenae, only to be greeted by yet another seemingly impossible task...

Coverpage - Introduction - The Lion, Hydra, & Stag - The Boar, Stables, & Birds - The Bull, Mares, & Girdle - The Cattle, Apples, & Cerberus


Author's Note:  As with the first three, this retelling of the next three Herculean Labors are fairly similar to their common tellings.  It should be noted that the Herculean Labors have been passed down through the generations by word of mouth, and that they have only been committed to writing in the past couple millenia, so different versions of the stories vary in minor ways.  However, there are some differences between this version and the other versions I read.
In the original telling of the labors, Hercules actually made a pitstop on his way to complete the Fourth Labor (capturing the boar).  He stopped to eat with some centaurs (half-human, half-horse) and ended up getting drunk when he had some very potent wine.  To make a long story short, he got upset and ended up starting a fight and killing many of them.  They retreated to their leader's house, and Hercules accidentally killed him with a poison arrow, only to find out later that it was Chiron, the centaur who served as his teacher and mentor.  I omitted this portion of the story because I am trying to present Hercules in a positive light, and he obviously really did have some anger issues.
Another major difference in some versions is that after cleaning the Augean stables, Hercules actually did try to follow through on Augeas's offer of compensation for his work (the offer was ten percent of the livestock in the stable).  Augeas refused, however, saying that Hercules did not do the work, but rather the river did.  What happened after that varies in different versions, but many say he threatened to kill Augeas or he actually did kill him, either way to teach him a lesson about honesty.

The accounts of these labors are adapted from:
R. E. Francillon's book, Gods and Heroes.  Published 1894.
"The Life and Times of Hercules", an article from the Perseus Project, Tufts University.
The images in this story are as follows:
1)  Image of a statue depicting Hercules wrestling the Erymanthian Boar, from an article on Wikipedia.
2)  Image of Hercules diverting the river to clean the Augean Stables in one day (note the waste exiting the other side...), from SteliArt Productions.
3)  Image of Hercules driving away the Stymphalian birds, from the Persues Project at Tufts University.

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