Show TUB AUGEAN Extending along the Ionian from the promontory to the river in ancient was a country belonging to the It contained about one thousand square including the western slopes of the and Arcadian It was a broken but had many fertile occupied by rich people who had beautiful The principal rivers of the called were the Alpheus and the There were three principal cities in this or state the principal named after and They were but were held to be Once every four years at Ellis assembled vast multitudes to hold religious The horses of Elea or as the country was were celebrated for their swiftness and was king of this At his stables in he had a herd of three thousand It was the duty of his chief herdsman to keep this number of choice oxen always on If one died the loss must be replaced This kept a demand for blooded or oxen of a certain and those who could raise that kind of animals sold them at a profit and were paid for their coming to the king who encouraged farming and agricultural pursuits by continually prices and premiums to those who by their skill and labor made Elea to be a very rich district or These stables were in a on a and for thirty not been cleaned The oxen had been moved a little from place to place at times so that the ground on which they had stood for thirty years had been raised to a shaped prominence from which streams ran to the original giving offense to and breeding a hero of son of Jupiter by was by his father destined to occupy the throne of but by the connivance of Juno was superseded by the grandson of Such was the strength of Hercules that people came to fear No matter what seemingly impossible task was given it was He was a hard man to No matter how often he was knocked out of time he rallied He was gifted by the and always held the winning People came to consider him more than The king kept heaping impossibilities up on the life of this young man but he did all that was commanded of He was ordered to go forth and slay a large that was devastating the Hercules went blocked up one of the entrances to the lion's then went in by the slew the beast and brought the carcass to One day King ordered Hercules to clean the royal stables where the oxen had been for thirty and to do it in one day The King had been greatly vexed because the seeming impossibilities he had commanded of Hercules had all been At a royal dinner he told his courtiers that he would break the spirit of Hercules and bring him to admit that there was something he could not Therefore he issued his royal edict that within twenty-four turns of the with such help as he could obtain from the poor of the city who were his should clean out the royal Augean Hercules called the boys and they cut the banks of the two Alpheus and turned the course of the streams the valley where the stables and in a few hours and thirty years of accumulated compost were swept away like a of rubbish by a While the King was some twenty hours after his orders were officers of the guard rushed into his apartments telling him that Hercules had cut the the rivers had leaped from their and that his oxen and stables were all swept He ordered the troops to hasten to the and turn the currents back to their proper but no troops or monarch could stem or stop the Hercules appeared before the expiration of the last hour of the reported that the stables were and asked for his refused to give whereupon Hercules slew and all sons but whom he made King in place of his |