The Augean Stables
His 6th labour was to clean the Augean Stables in one day.
Augean, the King of Elis, had many sheep and cattle. All his sheep and cattle slept in the royal stables. This might sound nice, but the stables had not been cleaned for several years. It was not nice at all! The most horrible smell greeted Hercules when he stuck his nose in the stable door.
Obviously, it would take a great deal of water to wash away all the filth. Hercules used his mighty strength to push the riverbeds of a couple of nearby rivers and change their course, so that the rivers would rush through the stables and clean them out! It was a clever solution. The job was done in just a few hours.
Hercules put most of the river beds back where they were. But he left one babbling brook for the comfort of the animals.
When all of the animals who lived in the stable came home that night from the fields, they found clean beds of hay, warm buckets of oats, and fresh running water. They could not have been more happy.
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