The next labor which Eurystheus laid upon Hercules was to clean out a
stable.
That does not sound very much after the others. But then the stable
was that of Augeas, King of Elis, which was at once the largest and
the dirtiest in the whole world.
Augeas had a prodigious number of oxen and goats, and the stable in
which they were all kept had never been cleaned. The result was a
mountain of filth and litter, which not even Hercules could clear away
in a lifetime--not, of course, from want of strength, but from want of
time. Hercules beheld with disgust and dismay the loathsome and
degrading toil in which he was to spend the rest of his days. The
other labors had at least been honorable, and befitting a prince: this
would have appalled a scavenger.
"It is very good of such a hero as you," said Augeas, "to undertake to
clean my stable. It really does want cleaning, as you see: and it was
very kind of Eurystheus to think of it. You shall not find me
ungrateful. I will give you one ox and one goat in every ten--when
the job is done."
He could very safely promise this, because he knew that the job could
never be done.
"I am not serving for hire," said Hercules. "Nevertheless it is only
right that you should not let your stable get into such a state as
this, and then get it put right for nothing. You want a lesson: and
you shall have it, too."
Seeing that mere strength would be wasted in such toil, Hercules went
to work with his brain as well. Through the land of Elis ran the river
Alpheus, that same Alpheus which had told Ceres what had become of
Proserpine. Hercules carefully studied the country; and having laid
his plans, dug a channel from near the source of the river to one of
the entrances of the stable. Then, damming up the old channel, he let
the stream run into the new. The new course was purposely made narrow,
so that the current might be exceedingly strong. When all was ready,
he opened the sluice at one entrance of the stable, so that the water
poured in a flood through the whole building, and out at a gate on the
other side. And it had all been so managed that when the river had
poured through, and was shut off again, all the filth and litter had
been carried away by the Alpheus underground, and the stable had been
washed clean, without a scrap of refuse to be found anywhere. For the
Alpheus, you must know, did not run into the sea, like other rivers.
It disappeared down a deep chasm, then ran through a natural tunnel
under the sea, and rose again, far away, in the island of Sicily,
where it had brought to Ceres the news from underground. Thus
everything thrown into it in Elis came up again in Sicily--and the
Sicilians must have been considerably astonished at that extraordinary
eruption of stable litter. Perhaps it is that which, acting as manure,
has helped to make Sicily so fertile.
Hercules made a point of claiming his price. But Augeas said:--
"Nonsense! A bargain is a bargain. You undertook to clean my stable:
and you have done nothing of the kind. No work, no pay."
"What can you mean?" asked Hercules. "Surely I have cleaned your
stable--you will not find in it a broken straw."
"No," said Augeas. "It was the Alpheus did that: not you."
"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.