JASON WAS the son of Aeson and the grandson of Aeolos, the lord of the island of Aeolia and Zeus’s keeper of the winds. Jason needed to set sail to the distant Black Sea to kill the dreaded dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece. The possession of this fleece would restore his father’s kingdom to him.
When Hylas and I arrived at the port in Thessaly, however, Jason accepted us but was not as pleased to recruit us as I had expected. Being that I was already famed for my strength and courage, and he was comparatively unknown, he feared that his assembled heroes would elect me as their captain.
When the vote came, it went as he expected. Jason, that luckless man, who lived to regret his life, conceded the captaincy to me, but I refused the honor.
“This quest is Jason’s!” I declared, “and so he shall lead us.”
My decision was for the best, as I abandoned the voyage when tragedy claimed my dear friend Hylas.
I will not describe the amazing ship, the Argo, which sailed as if by magic, or the monsters we battled after our passage through the Hellespont, that narrow strait between Asia and Europe. Instead, I shall speak of when we lost the wind for a time and had to rely on our oars. “I did not know my own strength” is a common expression, and that is just what I said when I snapped my oar in two in the blue-green waters. My comrades suggested we pull ashore to a wooded land beside a river on the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara.
While our shipmates made camp, Hylas and I wandered into the woods, he to find water, I to find the best tree to make into an oar.
As fond as I was of lolaos, who was nearly a nephew of mine, I was just as fond of Hylas. I must now relate the details of his death, a task which seems beyond any Eurystheus assigned me.
What happiness he and I might have shared on the voyage of the Argonauts! How proud we were to be helping Jason. But tragedy came when I least expected it. He had gone up the river canyon, carrying jugs and pitchers, to fetch the purest fresh water. He leaned over a sweet-smelling spring and a nymph, those divine women who live in the waters and woods and thereby give them the spirit of life, was so attracted to his beauty that she reached out from the waters and pulled him in.
I did not see this and I only learned the details much later when I entered Olympos as an immortal. No, at the time Hylas was made the bridegroom of the spring’s nymph, I was busily uprooting a massive tree to make into my oar. I do remember hearing a surprising splash. I looked up and called out, “Hylas!”
There was no answer.
I walked along the canyon where I knew he had gone and saw no sign of him but saw his jugs and pitchers on the grassy bank beside the spring. Have you ever seen a lost hound searching for his master? He is frantic, sniffing everywhere, not finding any clue. Just so was I, running through the woods, calling to my shipmates, who, less fearful than I, less concerned, tried to reassure me. “He’s followed another trail to another spring. He’ll be back,” said Jason.
The fool! Hylas never came back. I passed by the spring a dozen times, I peered into its depths, and I lowered myself into its icy waters. But the nymph knew the value of the boy she had stolen and did not let me detect him.
I refused to leave, even the next day, when Jason ordered the men back on the ship. “Without Hylas, I can sail no more,” I told him.
“So be it,” he said. “The wind has come back to us. We must sail.”
I bade him farewell. Some say that Zeus, watchful father, did not want me to dally away from my labors any longer, and that he thereby encouraged the nymph in her kidnapping of Hylas. But Zeus tells me no, that he was content to let me continue with Jason’s voyage, and that the true story is that Hylas was stolen because of his beauty.
In any case, I returned with sadness to Eurystheus, who, it turned out, resented my long absence and had come up with a labor with which he meant to shame me.
“I command you——” Eurystheus said, before laughing so hard he could not speak another word for several moments. He took up a piece of his kingly robe and wiped his eyes before he was able to go on. “Go to King Augeas, he of the famous cattle yards . . . and, in a single day, clear out the dung from his stables! That is your labor, Hercules!”
I, Hercules, cart away tons of manure! In one day? Had I known ahead of time the immensity of the heaps of dung I might have retired from the labors then and there. But, after all, what labor not of one’s will is ever a complete pleasure?
Augeas was the king of Elis, that northwestern region of the Peloponnese, and though he was rich on account of his herds of cattle, he had allowed their stables to fill so high with manure they had become impassable and unusable.
I did not inform Augeas that I came to his land to fulfill a task for Eurystheus. Instead I held my nose and told him, “Allow me, wealthy king, to clean out your stables today.”
“Help yourself,” said Augeas. “Zeus knows I couldn’t do it in a year! I’ll grant you a tenth of my herds should you succeed.”
“One tenth of all your wealth!” I said.
“That’s about right,” he said. “And good luck. Now over there you’ll find a shovel.”
I dragged my feet to the hut where he had pointed, and looked with helplessness on such a tool. I leaned on the shovel and gazed out at the lovely view of the countryside and beyond to the Menius River, a blue ribbon winding past Elis.
“If I should somehow succeed in shoveling this manure away, I will bathe for hours in those cleansing waters!” I remarked to myself.
For once it was not Athene who supplied me with a good idea—I inspired myself. Tossing away the shovel, I rushed back into the hut, where I found halters for yoking cattle. I picked out the four largest bovine beasts and arranged them in a team, with me standing atop the widest plow I could find, and a sharp-edged boulder in addition dragging behind. We would cut a channel to the river.
“Onward!” I cried, and snapped the reins. The cattle, only too happy to be driven out of the messy stable-yard, pulled me along. The channel was no wider than a creekbed, but it was well-shaped and deep. In the afternoon we reached the river, and in the next phase of the sun after that, with only a short while to go until sundown and failure, I set about damming the river to divert its flow into my empty creekbed.
Other men may be more clever than I, but this was one time I was justly proud of my wisdom. The dammed river found my creekbed and then raced along it, faster almost than I could run alongside. In little time it arrived at the stableyards, where, with that lonesome shovel, I directed the stream in the directions it was most needed. The water washed through the stables and the yard, collecting the manure with it, and then coursed down out of the yard and into a low pocket of wooded land between the pasturelands, where it formed a somewhat muddy and smelly lake.
When the yard was cleaner than it had been since creation, I hurried back to the spot where I had dammed the river and broke it free once again, giving thanks to the guardian nymph of its crystal waters. I shored up the creek and drove Augeas’ fine cattle back to the stables.
For once I was the hero of animals instead of their hunter. Augeas, on the other hand, turned pale when he returned that evening and saw the tremendous feat I had performed.
“I believe you said one-tenth of your cattle, king,” I reminded him.
Was I wrong to expect payment when it had been promised to me? Though Eurystheus would soon hold me blameworthy, I hope you do not. For what man offered a prize without having asked for it does not begin to dream of that prize as expectantly as a man who has demanded it?
But Augeas was a cheat and said, “I never would have offered you such a stake of my cattle had I thought you capable of cleaning the stables in a day! You deceived me into thinking it impossible!”
“I did not trick you, king, by words or action.”
“I cannot pay you what you ask,” he countered. “Please, instead, accept with my warmest appreciation ... you walked here, didn’t you, from Tiryns?”
“Yes.”
“Then, I grant you . . . ” At this moment we heard a braying from the barn, and Augeas smiled and said, “ . . . my trusty, humble yet dependable mule, Rocky.”
I was angry, but what could I do? I had many more labors to perform and killing Augeas was not part of the labor Eurystheus required of me. I took the mule, poor broken down work-animal, but after a dozen yards I had to give up riding it, it moaned so. It could not take my pack or weapons as a load either, so I carried those and let him follow in my tracks.
Eurystheus was amused at the image I presented when I arrived at his court.
“Do you return with a donkey because you have failed and are ashamed, Hercules?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, “I succeeded, as usual. This donkey was the payment I received from Augeas for my amazing feat of cleaning his stables.”
Cunning Eurystheus smiled with an unbecoming humor and said, “Dear me, Hercules. You have accepted payment for a task I assigned you. That can hardly count as a labor, then. Just as with the hydra, you have not satisfied the terms of our contract. You still owe me seven more labors. But, believe me, you shall not live through them all! For your next task, go chase away the Stymphalian birds. You’ll have your hands full with them, I tell you!”
I choked off my hot anger at his cheating ways and departed.