The Fifth Labour: The Stables Of Augeias

HERACLES’S Fifth Labour was to cleanse King Augeias’s filthy cattle yard in one day. Eurystheus gleefully pictured Heracles’s disgust having to load the dung into baskets and carry these away on his shoulders. Augeias, King of Elis, was the son of Helius, or Eleius, by Naupiadame, a daughter of Amphidamas; or, some say, by Iphinoë. Others call him the son of Poseidon. In flocks and herds he was the wealthiest man on earth: for, by a divine dispensation, his were immune against disease and inimitably fertile, nor did they ever miscarry. Although in almost every case they produced female offspring, he nevertheless had three hundred white-legged black bulls and two hundred red stud-bulls; besides twelve outstanding silvery-white bulls: sacred to his father Helius. These twelve hundreds defended his herds against marauding wild beasts from the wooded hills.

b. Now, the dung in Augeias’s cattle yard and sheep-folds had not been cleared away for many years, and though its poisonous stench not affect the beasts themselves, it spread a pestilence across the whole Peloponnese. Moreover, the valley pastures were so deep in dung that they could no longer be ploughed for grain.
c. Heracles hailed Augeias from afar, and undertook to cleanse the yard before nightfall in return for a tenth part of the cattle. Augeias laughed incredulously, and called Phyleus, his eldest son, to witness Heracles’ offer. ‘Swear to accomplish the task before nightfall,’ Phyleus demanded. The oath which Heracles now took by his father’s name the first and last one he ever swore. Augeias likewise took an oath to keep his side of the bargain. At this moment, Phaëthon, the leader of the twelve white bulls, charged at Heracles,  mistaking him for a lion; whereupon he seized the bull’s left horn, forced its neck downwards, and floored it by main strength.
d. On the advice of Menedemus the Elean, and aided by Iolaus, Heracles first breached the wall of the yard in two places, and next diverted the neighbouring rivers Alpheus and Peneius, or Menius, so that their streams rushed through the yard, swept it clean and then went on to cleanse the sheep-folds and the valley pastures. Thus Heracles accomplished this Labour in one day, restoring the land to health, and not soiling so much as his little finger. But Augeias, on being informed by Copreus that Heracles had already been under orders from Eurystheus to cleanse the cattle yards, refused to pay the reward and even dared deny that he and Heracles had struck a bargain.
e. Heracles suggested that the case be submitted to arbitration; yet when the judges were seated, and Phyleus, subpoenaed by Heracles, testified to the truth, Augeias sprang up in a rage and banished them both from Elis, asserting that he had been tricked by Heracles, since the river-gods, not he, had done the work. To make matters even worse, Eurystheus refused to count this Labour as one of the ten, because Heracles had been in Augeias’s hire.
f. Phyleus then went to Dulichium; and Heracles to the court of Dexamenus, King of Olenus, whose daughter Mnesimache he later rescued from the Centaur Eurytion.

1. This confused myth seems to be founded on the legend that Heracles, like Jason, was ordered to tame two bulls, yoke them, clean an overgrown hill, then plough, sow, and  reap it in a single day-the usual tasks set a candidate for kingship. Here, the hill had to be cleared not of trees and stones, as in the Celtic versions of the myth, but of dung-probably because the name of Eurystheus’s herald, who delivered the order, was Copreus (‘dung-man’). Sir James Frazer commenting on Pausanias, quotes a Norse tale, ‘The Master” in which a prince who wishes to win a giant’s daughter must fix three stables. For each pitch-fork of  dung which he tosses out, ten reappear. The princess then advises him to turn the pitchfork upside-down the handle. He does so, and the stable is soon cleansed. Frazer suggests that, in the original version, Athene may have given Heracles this advice; more likely, however, the Norse tale is a variant of this Labour. Augeias’s cattle are irrelevant to the story, except to account for the mass of dung to be removed. Cattle manure, as the myth shows, wasn’t valued by Greek farmers. Hesiod, in his Works and Days, does not mention it; and H. Mitchell (Economics of Ancient Greece) shows that the cattle on fallow land is prohibited in several ancient leases. The dog Argus did, indeed, lie on a midden used for dunging the land (Odyssey), but wherever the Odyssey may have been written-and it certainly was not on the Greek mainland-the references to agriculture and arboriculture suggest a survival of Cretan practice. According to some mythographers, Augeias was the son of Eleius, which means more than ‘King of Elis’; according to others, a son of Poseidon suggests that he was an Aeolian. But Eleius has here been confused with Helius, the Corinthian Sun-god; and Augeias is therefore credited a herd of sacred cattle, like that owned by Sisyphus. The of number of heads in such herds was 350, representing twelve complete lunations less the sacred five-day holiday of the Egyptian year; that they were lunar cattle was proved by their red, white, and black colours; and the white bulls represent these twelve lunations. Such cattle were often stolen-as by Heracles himself in his Tenth Labour-and the sequel to his quarrel with Augeias was that he won these bulls as well.

2. The Fifth Labour, which properly concerns only ploughing, sowing and reaping tasks has, in fact, been confused with two others: Tenth, namely the lifting of Geryon’s cattle; and the Seventh, namely the capture of Poseidon’s white Cretan bull-which was not used for ploughing. In the cult of Poseidon-who is also described as Augeias father-young men wrestled with bulls, and Heracles’s struggle Phaëthon, like Theseus’s against the Minotaur, is best understood as coronation rite: by magical contact with the bull’s horn, he was capable of fertilizing the land, and earned the title of Potidan, or Posidon, given to the Moon-goddess’s chosen lover. Similarly, in a love dispute Heracles fought the river Achelous, represented as a bull-headed and broke off his cornucopia. The deflection of the Alpheius suggests that the icon from which this incident is deduced shows Heracles twisting the Cretan Bull around by the horns, beside the bank of a river, where numerous cattle were grazing. This bull was mistaken for a river-god, and the scene misread as meaning that he had deflected the river in order to cleanse the field, for ploughing.