The fourth labour: The Boar
Eurytheus now wanted Herakles to yet pursue another animal. It was a boar which ate humans. Thinking that the boar would be more ferocious than the deer, Eurytheus was happy that he had given Herakles a task he would not be able to complete. However, Herakles proved him wrong.
It was not hard for Herakles to find the boar, because of the loud sounds it made as it rested. When Herakles advanced upon the boar, it ran as fast as it could. Herakles chased the boar for some time, slowly driving it higher and higher up the mountain it was on. Finally, when the boar reached the snowy regions of the mountain, it got stuck in the snow, and Herakles easily tied the animal up to return to Mycenae.

The fifth labour: The Augeian Stables
By now, Eurytheus was angry that for every task he had given Herakles, Herakles was able to complete it easily. He therefore decided to try to give Herakles a different task, one that would take a long time to complete. The task was to clean the stables of King Augeias. The king had a herd of immortal cattle, and since they were immortal, the number of cattle increased day by day without any cattle dying. With this amount of cattle, the king could no longer keep up with the amount of filth they produced. Eurytheus thus commanded Herakles to cleaning the stables where the cattle were kept.

Cleaning the stables was a daunting and dirty job, which was a job way below that of a god's son. However, Herakles managed to think up a method to clean up the stables quickly and without having to dirty himself. He broke a hole in the stable walls, and then rerouted the river Alpheios right through the stables themselves. The water gushed through the stables, cleaning out the filth and the dirt that had collected over the years, and when the task was complete, Herakles returned the river to its original course. All Herakles had to do next was to patch up the hole he had made for the river, and the task was complete.

The sixth labour: The Stymphalian Birds
Eurystheus was dismayed that the task he had thought would take many years, had been completed by Herakles in a single day. Hoping to make things harder for the hero, he reprimanded Herakles for getting external help on two counts. First was during the slaying of the Hydra, where Herakles had his servant to help. Second was in the cleaning of the stables, where Herakles had employed the help of the river god.

The king now thought he had an impossible task for Herakles and so he gleefully challenged Herakles to it, this time without any form of assistance. The marshes of Stymphalia were swarmed by countless flocks of man-eating birds, which terrorised the nearby areas. The task, as the king dictated, was to drive the birds out of the swamp once and for all, so the people may be safe.
Herakles arrived at the swamp only to be greeted by the endless flocks of birds with sharp talons and bronze beaks and feathers. To protect himself from the birds' claws, he put on the skin which he had gotten from the Nemean tiger. The skin of the tiger was harder than the birds' claws, and would be able to protect him from the birds.

At first Herakles tried to kill the birds, but there were too many birds and no matter how many he killed, the number never seemed to go down. Eventually, he decided to chase them away using noise. He chased the birds around, clanging his weapons together as he screamed as loudly as he could. Finally, after much effort, he managed to chase the birds away, who flew over the horizon in a huge bronze cloud.

Next: The next three labours >>