The Twelve Labors (Second 3)

For the fourth labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring him the Erymanthian boar alive. The boar lived on a mountain called Erymanthus. Every day the boar would come crashing down from his lair on the mountain, attacking men and animals all over the countryside, gouging them with its tusks, and destroying everything in its path. Hercules chased the boar round and round the mountain, shouting as loud as he could. The boar, frightened and out of breath, hid in a thicket. Hercules poked his spear into the thicket and drove the exhausted animal into a deep patch of snow. Then he trapped the boar in a net, and carried it all the way to Mycenae, Eurystheus's home. The fifth task was for Hercules to clean up Augean's stables in one day. Augean had the most cattle in all of greece and this task would be difficult. Hercules made holes in teh barn and diverted the rivers so they rush through the stables clearing the poop and debris. For the sixth Labor, Hercules was to drive away an enormous flock of birds which gathered at a lake near the town of Stymphalos. The goddess Athena came to his aid, providing a pair of bronze krotala, noisemaking clappers similar to castanets. These were no ordinary noisemakers. They had been made by an immortal craftsman, Hephaistos, the god of the forge. Climbing a nearby mountain, Hercules clashed the krotalaloudly, scaring the birds out of the trees, then shot them with bow and arrow, or possibly with a slingshot, as they took flight.

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