}lis.

The sixth labor was his cleansing the stable of Augeas. This Augeas,
king of Elis, had a stable intolerable from the stench occasioned by the
filth it contained, which may be readily imagined from the fact that it
sheltered three thousand oxen, and had not been cleansed for thirty
years. This place Eurystheus ordered Hercules to clear in one day, and
Augeas promised, if he performed the task, to give him a tenth part of
the cattle. Hercules, by turning the course of the river Alph{=e}us
through the stable, executed his design, which Augeas seeing, refused to
fulfil his promise. The hero, to punish his perfidy, slew Augeas with
his arrows, and gave his kingdom to his son Phyleus, who abhorred his
father's treachery.

The seventh labor was the capture of the Cretan bull. Minos, king of
Crete, having acquired the dominion of the Grecian seas, paid no greater
honor to Neptune than to the other gods, wherefore the deity, in
resentment of this ingratitude, sent a bull, which breathed fire from
his nostrils, to destroy the people of Crete. Hercules took this furious
animal, and brought him to Eurystheus, who, because the bull was sacred,
let him loose into the country of Marathon, where he was afterwards
slain by Theseus.

The eighth labor of Hercules, was the killing of Diom{=e}des and his
horses. That infamous tyrant was king of Thrace, and son of Mars and
Cyr{=e}ne. Among other things he is said to have driven in his
war-chariot four furious horses, which, to render the more impetuous, he
used to feed on the flesh and blood of his subjects. Hercules is said to
have freed the world from this barbarous prince, and to have killed both
him and his horses, as is signified in some drawings, and said expressly
by some of the poets. Some report that the tyrant was given by Hercules
as a prey to his own horses.

The ninth labor of Hercules was his combat with Geryon, king of Spain.
Geryon is generally represented with three bodies agreeable to the
expressions used of him by the poets, and sometimes with three heads. He
had a breed of oxen of a purple color, (which devoured all strangers
cast to them) guarded by a dog with two heads, a dragon with seven,
besides a very watchful and severe keeper. Hercules, however, killed the
monarch and all his guards, and carried the oxen to Gades, whence he
brought them to Eurystheus. Some mythologists explain this fable by
saying that Geryon was king of three islands, now called Majorc