![]() For 30 years the Augean Stables had held 3000 cattle with the accumulated dung having never been cleaned out. ![]() Having failed to kill Heracles, King Eurystheus now tried to humiliate the hero by having him clean out the cattle shed of King Augeus. The Erymanthian Boar was subsequently released by Heracles, with the animal then swimming to Italy. When Heracles returned to Tiryns with the Erymanthian Boar, Euirystheus was so afraid that he his himself away in a wine jar for three days. Heracles easily managed to capture it by forcing it into deep snow. King Eurystheus resorted to a deadly beast for Heracles’ Fourth Labour, with the hero tasked to capture the deadly Erymanthian Boar, a beast ravaging Psophis. ![]() It was a yearlong chase before Heracles finally caught the Ceryneian Hind, and Heracles managed to talk himself out of trouble with Artemis, promising to release the hind once his Labour was at an end. Less deadly in nature than the Nemean Lion or the Lernaean Hydra, the Ceryneian Hind was a sacred animal of the goddess Artemis, to even if Heracles caught the beast, Eurystheus believed that Artemis would kill him for his insolence. The third Labour of Heracles, tasked to him by King Eurystheus was to capture the golden horned Ceryneian Hind. Having survived against the Nemean Lion, Heracles was dispatched to an even more deadly monster, the Lernaean Hydra, a water monster who guarded one of the entrances to the Underworld. Heracles would return to Tiryns with the skin of the Nemean Lion worn over his shoulders, resulting in a sight that caused Eurystheus to hide himself away inside a large jar, and Heracles was forbidden to enter the city again. The first task set to Heracles by Eurystheus was the slaying of the Nemean Lion, a beast with claws of bronze and impenetrable skin that terrorised the land on the border of Nemea and Mycenae, and who had killed all that had set out to kill it.Äiscovering that his arrows were useless against the beast, Heracles would use his club to force the Nemean Lion back into his own cave, and in the confined space, Heracles would strangle the monster. Eurystheus was a favoured king of Hera, for she had intervened to ensure he became king of Tiryns rather than Heracles, and Hera would subsequently guide the king in the setting of tasks, each of which was thought to be impossible, and many were considered deadly to attempt.
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